MEDIA FOR CHANGE NETWORK

The Agony of a Tree-Planting Project on Communities’ Land in Uganda

Published

5 years ago

September 28, 2020

Some mothers who lost children due to the lack of food after New Forests Company’s evictions. Ph: witnessradio.org

The large-scale plantations from UK-based New Forests Company (NFC) have meant violence, forceful evictions and misery for thousands of residents from Mubende, Uganda. More than 15 years after the company began its operations in Uganda, affected communities still confront the long-lasting and severe damages.

Misery is what fills the hearts of the residents of seven villages in the Mubende district where the New Forests Company illegally evicted close to 1000 households from their land.

The UK-based New Forests Company (NFC) was founded with the vision of creating “sustainable timber products” in East Africa amidst rampant deforestation NFC plantations are also a carbon project, which generates additional profits for the Company from the selling of carbon credits. The first tree was planted in Mubende, Uganda, in 2004. Since then, the Company has rapidly expanded with four new plantation areas in Uganda as well as in Tanzania and Rwanda.

The expansion has however come with unimaginable pain to hundreds of households and gross human rights abuses, mainly in the Mubende district. Between 2006 and 2010, more than 10,000 people were evicted from their lands in the district of Mubende, in some cases with the use of violence, to make way for the NFC plantations.

NFC and the World Bank, one of the Company’s financial supporters, were once in dialogue with their evictees but abandoned them. According to documents seen by Ugandan media platform witnessradio.org, NFC was dragged into dialogue with its evictees after a critical report exposed in 2011 the lack of respect for communities’ human rights in the name of a carbon credit project. (1) The report, which was released by the NGO Oxfam, accused NFC and its security agents for committing human rights violations/abuses with impunity. The World Bank appointed a mediator from the Office of Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO). The CAO handles complaints from communities affected by investments made by the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank.

By 2011, NFC had attracted investment from international banks and private equity funds. These include the European Investment Bank (EIB), EU’s financing institution, that had loaned NFC five million Euros (almost US 6 million dollars) to expand one of its plantations in Uganda. The Agri-Vie Agribusiness Fund, a private equity investment fund, focused on food and agribusiness in sub-Saharan Africa, had invested US 6.7 million dollars in NFC. Agri-Vie is in itself backed up by development finance institutions, notably the World Bank’s private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). But the most significant investment came from UK bank HSBC (around US 10 million dollars), which gave HSBC 20 per cent ownership of the Company and one of the six seats on the NFC Board. All these investors have, in theory, social and environmental standards in order to maintain and manage their own portfolios.

Long-lasting suffering and violence

After a15-months long dialogue facilitated by the CAO, evictees were offered very little compared to what they owned before. The little payments were not based on the results of any valuation exercise to assess what the evictees had lost due to the violent and forceful evictions.

Witnessradio.org has uncovered that during the dialogue, NFC forced evictees to establish a Cooperative club if they were to get any payment from the company. Also, evictees were forced to pay subscription fees to become a member of the club and benefit from the company’s contribution. Many could not afford this fee, but the handful of people that managed to pay their subscription fees to the Cooperative, were at the end of the day given an acre of land each (less than half an hectare). Only 48% of the 10,000 evictees received this piece of land.

Our investigations indicate that after NFC paid 600,000,000 Uganda Shillings (close to US 180,000 dollars) through the Cooperative club’s account for 8,958 hectares of land and other damages suffered by the evictees, the stakeholders involved abandoned the evictees to suffer the anguish.

The Company’s plantations have shuttered lives and caused irreparable damages to the affected communities.

According to the evictees, NFC’s plantations have caused a big number of deaths among children due to malnutrition. At the time of the evictions, all children dropped out of schools and married at a tender age. Further, many families of the evictees began to live in refugee camps after failing to obtain food to feed their families, while hundreds of families broke up. And the list of long-standing impacts goes on.

The testimonies of forceful evictions and lack of due compensation overshadow the social development projects that the company flags whenever it talks about its achievements.

Shantel Tumubone, aged 50, and her family, was evicted 10 years ago from their ancestral home in Kyamukasa Village, Kitumbi Sub-county, Kassanda District. They were promised compensation that would enable them to find alternative land for their settlement.

She moved to a nearby village as she looked for land in anticipation of receiving compensation. “I have waited for the money to date. There is no single coin that we have received as compensation and we don’t know if it will happen” Tumubone, whose hope is fading away, tells witnessradio.org.

After waiting in vain, Tumubone managed to get casual employment on a farm in the Kabweyakiza Village, which is a few kilometres from where she used to live with her family. Having lost everything during the eviction, Tumubone later lost her husband because they could no longer afford the medical bills. Even worse, she did not have where to bury her husband and, thus, a swap deal was made between her and the plantations company: in exchange of her carrying out casual work in the plantations for eight months, the Company would give her a piece of land in her former village valued at 1 million Uganda Shillings (around US 270 dollars) so that she could bury her husband.

Tumubone is one of the many people who have been driven into poverty and landlessness by the New Forests Company. People who used to own land for cultivation and survival have been turned into beggars, while several others have become labourers at the Company working on what used to be their land.

Many of the people that Witnessradio.org spoke to dispute reports of due consultation and of compensation for alternative land.

“We were never consulted or agreed to what the New Forests Company did. We have been reduced to paupers and who would choose such a life. I personally used to own 15 acres [6 hectares] of land where I planted a variety of crops,” said one of the residents who is now a casual labourer at the Company’s plantations.

Despite all this, in its 2011 report to the UN, the New Forests Company claims that the people vacated their land voluntarily and peacefully, which does not tally with the situation at hand when you talk with and listen to the affected communities.

FSC: Certifying devastation

What is also striking is that NFC managed to obtain an FSC certification for its plantations, which allegedly vouches for a company’s “socially beneficial” practices. The FSC certification is supposed to ensure that products with the seal come from responsibly managed plantations that provide environmental, social, and economic benefits.

In an audit report conducted in 2010, FSC declared regarding the evictions that the company had followed peaceful means and acted responsibly.

With the situation in the areas where the New Forests Company is implementing its tree planting projects, there is no doubt that the company is flouting the certification company’s standard criteria in acquiring land. In consequence, many homeless people have been left with limited hope of returning to their land and homes.

The chairperson of the displaced households, Mr. Julius Ndagize, has said that several meetings with the managers of the New Forests Company have not been fruitful.

“The Company only managed to resettle a few families after we managed to secure 500 acres [200 hectares] of land in Kampindu Village, where each family managed to get an acre of land and the rest are landless”. Says Mr. Ndagize.

Background to the increasing large-scale investment

Following the spike in commodity prices in 2007-2008, investors expressed interest in 56 million hectares of land for agriculture and timber production, and Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 2/3 of this expressed demand. Despite the poor record of large agricultural investments in Africa and parts of Asia, the global median project size of 40,000 hectares implies that these investments could have major implications for rural land rights and existing land users, especially smallholders.

Alarmingly, countries with weak legal frameworks for recognizing rural land rights as well as poor environmental regulation for business operations are most likely to be targeted by large-scale investments.

The Ugandan constitution states that “land in Uganda belongs to the citizens of Uganda”. But stories of non-compensation for over ten years point to gross abuse of the Ugandan law and total abuse of the citizens’ rights to whom the land belongs.

Forced evictions also constitute gross violations of a range of internationally recognized human rights, including the human rights to adequate housing, food, water, health, education, work, security of the person, freedom from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and freedom of movement.

The impacts of forced evictions go far beyond material losses, leading to deeper inequality and injustices, marginalization, and social conflicts.

With the evictions happening in Uganda unabated, there is no doubt that the margin between the rich and poor is widening on top of gross abuse of human rights.

The Witness Radio team, Uganda
witnessradio.org

(1) WRM Bulletin 171, Uganda: New Forests Company – FSC legitimizes the eviction of thousands of people from their land and the sale of carbon credits, 2011; and Oxfam International, The New Forests Company and its Uganda plantations, 2011

Original Post: wrm.org

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MEDIA FOR CHANGE NETWORK

EACOP project triggers floods in Kyotera District.

Published

2 weeks ago

May 9, 2025

witnessradio.org

By Witness Radio team.

As the detrimental effects of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project intensify, hundreds of Ugandan communities are bearing the brunt of this colossal project. From forced evictions and displacements to the criminalization of project critics and now devastating flash floods, the urgency of addressing these issues is paramount. The suffering of local communities hosting the project has been exacerbated.

In Kyotera District, central Uganda, communities remain stranded as floodwaters rush into their homes and gardens, destroying their food stores and leaving families in despair. Residents attribute the cause of the floods to the ongoing construction activities related to the EACOP project.

Kyotera is one of the 10 districts that the project traverses to the port of Tanga in Tanzania; the others include Hoima, Kikuube, Kakumiro, Kyankwanzi, Gomba, Mubende, Lwengo, Sembabule, and Rakai.

The EACOP project, a 1,444km pipeline that will transport oil from Hoima in Uganda to the port of Tanga in Tanzania, has cast a wide net of impact. It has affected thousands of people, especially in local communities, leading to displacement, destruction of property and crops, and environmental hazards such as floods.

The development of oil activities in Uganda has led to several major projects supporting oil extraction, processing, and export. The proponents of these projects argue that they bring economic development and job opportunities to the region.

These include the EACOP project, the Tilenga Project operated mainly by Total Energies (with partners like CNOOC and UNOC), which covers oil fields located in Buliisa and Nwoya districts, and the Kingfisher Project, which is managed by the Chinese oil company CNOOC and is located on the southeastern shores of Lake Albert (mainly in Kikuube District). It focuses on drilling oil and setting up a central processing facility (CPF), and oil camps and access roads have been constructed to support these operations.

However, these developments have not left the communities the same. Instead of bringing only the promised prosperity, they have contributed to poverty, fear, and uncertainty among the local populations and have exacerbated the climate crisis.

It is also worth noting that activists who stand up to defend these communities face a different kind of suffering: harassment, surveillance, arrests, and even physical attacks. They have been criminalized under vague charges, often labeled as enemies of development for demanding transparency, fair compensation, and environmental protection.

For the communities in Kyotera, the construction of an access road leading to the EACOP camp in the Kyotera district, which serves as a base for project operations, blocked drainage channels, causing water to overflow into the neighboring villages.

The floods, which started last month in April, have now affected seven households in Kyakacwere village, Kakuto Subcounty, Kyotera district.

People’s houses and gardens are flooded, forcing them to look for alternative places to live, and several plantations, such as banana plantations, maize, and beans, among others, continue to be affected. The impacts have already caused dispossession to the affected communities and are likely to cause financial losses and food insecurity for smallholder farmers and their families.

Noeline Nambatya, a 47-year-old mother and a person with disability, shares her traumatic experience of waking up to a flooded house. “This has never happened to us. I found my house full of water in the morning, and several of my household items had already been destroyed. We want justice, we can’t stay in this situation. We were living peacefully, and now, because of the so-called investors, this is what we are reaping.” She revealed in an interview with the Witness Radio team.

The disaster left her home logged, her crops destroyed, and her livelihood distorted. Currently, the caretaker of eight faces immense challenges in providing for her family, including feeding and supporting them in school. The adverse situation forced her and the family to relocate to the nearby village of Muyenga.

Another affected person, Lukyamuze Paul, claims the floods have caused significant damage, including cracking houses and severely destroying crops. He holds the EACOP project responsible for the devastation, stating that when the access road leading to the EACOP camp was constructed, it blocked existing drainage channels, changing the natural water flow into people’s homes.

The environmental concerns arising from EACOP project activities, such as floods, continue to affect different project host communities. The problem was first experienced in Bulisa district in 2022 when Total Energies began the construction of the Tilenga feeder pipeline, resulting in floods that affected surrounding communities.

MEDIA FOR CHANGE NETWORK

Ugandan activist asks HSBC to put ‘lives before profit’ as campaigners target bank’s AGM

Published

2 weeks ago

May 9, 2025

witnessradio.org

Patience Nabukalu, who has experienced climate-related flooding, joins protestors from around the world to deliver a letter to CEO Georges Elhedery criticising the financing of oil, gas and coal projects.

At nine years old, Patience Nabukalu was devastated when her friend, Kevin, died in severe flooding that hit their Kampala suburb, Nateete, a former wetland. Witnessing deaths and the destruction of homes and livelihoods in floods made worse by extreme rainfall has had a profound impact on her.

She decided to try to bring about change – to do what she could to amplify the voices of those in the Ugandan communities worst affected by the climate crisis.

Now 27, Nabukalu is one of several young climate activists who travelled to London this week to attend what has been predicted to be the last in-person AGM held by HSBC. They will deliver a letter to the bank’s CEO, Georges Elhedery, urging him to stop financing the expansion of oil, gas and coal projects and harmful industrial agribusiness, and to stop providing money to companies that forcibly remove people from their homes to make way for such infrastructure.

“This is an opportunity to talk to real people, not just an HSBC office,” said Nabukalu, speaking before the meeting at the Intercontinental hotel. “I will be so happy to get the chance to hand over the letter and to ask: ‘Has HSBC measured the damage they have done by financing corporations that are driving the climate crisis?’”

A woman stands in front of a banner with the London financial district skyline behind her.

Nabukalu in London ahead of the protest. Photograph: Jess Midwinter/Action Aid

The letter refers to a 2023 Action Aid report, which identifies HSBC as “the largest European financier of fossil fuels in the global south”, channelling $63.5bn (£48bn) into fossil fuel activities between 2016 and 2022.

The letter to Elhedery, from young people all over the world, refers to HSBC’s plans, announced earlier this year, to review its commitment to scaling back its financing of fossil fuels.

“This has made something very clear: you value profit margins and boardroom agendas more than the lives of millions of people bearing the full brunt of your decisions,” the letter reads.

Environmentalists criticised HSBC after it delayed key parts of its climate goals by 20 years, and watered down environmental targets in a new long-term bonus plan for Elhedery that could be worth up to 600% of his salary. In February, the lender said it was reviewing its net zero emissions policies and targets – which are split between its own operations and those of the companies it finances – after realising its clients and suppliers had “seen more challenges” in cutting their carbon footprint than expected.

The activists’ letter asks “that you not only stand by your commitments to end your support for the fossil fuel industry in line with what the science requires, but also put an end to all lending and underwriting for corporations involved in fossil fuel expansion”.

Nabukalu will also urge the bank to stop funding corporations that are backing the east African crude oil pipeline from Uganda to Tanzania. Once constructed, the pipeline would produce an estimated 379m tonnes of CO₂ over 25 years. The main backers of the multimillion-dollar pipeline are the French oil company TotalEnergies and the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

Nabukalu, who has visited people living along the proposed route, said: “This pipeline is already causing damage even before its construction. Thousands and thousands of people have been displaced. They were promised land titles, but have none. Their livelihoods have been sabotaged. They cannot build agriculture, the water table is low, so they have little access to water.

“These people should be at the centre of the bank’s decisions.”

“We will talk to HSBC and ask them to stop financing fossil fuels that are driving the climate crisis,” said Nabukalu. “By continuing to finance TotalEnergies they are destroying our future.”

A report published in April found that those displaced along the pipeline’s proposed route had reported being inadequately compensated and rehoused.

Some western banks have declined to fund it after pressure from a coalition of organisations and community groups.

A spokesperson for HSBC said: “We follow a clear set of sustainability risk policies which support our ambition to align the financed emissions in our portfolio to net zero by 2050. We do not comment on client relationships.”

Source: The Guardian.

MEDIA FOR CHANGE NETWORK

Over 1,000 residents in Uganda’s lost village at risk of extreme hunger

Published

3 weeks ago

May 2, 2025

witnessradio.org

What you need to know:

In January, a joint team of soldiers and police evicted more than 400 local people who had been occupying part of the 64 square kilometre Maruzi ranch in Apac District. The most affected were actually residents of Acam-cabu Village.

Acam-cabu Village is no longer a recognised administrative unit in northern Uganda’s Apac District after it was erased from the map of Uganda following a land dispute.

Since this area is now excluded from the list of existing villages in the country, a total of 1,040 people living in 180 households there cannot now benefit from any government programmes and projects.

Mr Bosco Wacha, the LCI chairman of Acam-cabu, said the village disappeared from the map of Uganda around 2018.
“Since 2018, I have not been getting my salary and the people who have been isolated because of this confusion are suffering,” Mr Wacha said on the phone on Thursday, May 1, 2025.

He also said all the households in the lost village are at risk of extreme hunger and starvation because the government has stopped them from engaging in any farming or economic activities.

“There is a severe shortage of food here because we have been stopped from farming. We are not able now to take our children to school and we lack access to healthcare,” said Mr Joe Olwock, the area chairman of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.

Mr Felix Odongo Ococ, Akokoro LC3 chairman, said that although the government doesn’t recognise Acam-cabu as a village in Uganda, during the National Population and Housing Census, 2024, enumerators went and counted people there.

Data obtained from the local leadership of this isolated administrative unit shows that there are 180 households in Acam-cabu. Of these, at least 14 households have one member each and eight households have eight members.

However, a household regarded as number eight in the document that was reportedly sent to the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) has the highest membership, standing at 11 people. This household is followed by number 158, which has 10 members, and household number eight has a total of nine members.

Dr Kenneth Omona, the Minister of Northern Uganda, previously said he would meet the leadership of Apac to try to iron out all issues affecting the community in the district.
In January, a joint team of soldiers and police evicted more than 400 local people who had been occupying part of the 64 square kilometre Maruzi ranch in Apac District. The most affected were actually residents of Acam-cabu Village.

The squatters, numbering over 1,500 occupied the said land around 1995. They had repeatedly ignored various eviction notices, saying the land belongs to their fore grandfathers.

In September 2015, the High Court in Lira issued an interim order blocking Apac District leadership from evicting the affected residents. The district then resorted to using the army and police to evict the squatters.
The Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) has established a military detachment to man security of the area.

Source: Monitor.