Dear friends,
Mabira forest is back in the news and, this time around with a seemingly determined president who is ready to give away part of the forest for sugar cane growing. Speaking as someone who grew up on a farm in Bugerere, and who lived somewhere nearest to Mabira forest at Kangulumira, I would have to say president Museveni don’t have a clue about the environment. President museveni’s argument that giving away part of Mabira in 2007 would have prevented the current rise in sugar prices is so simplistic. His insistence that he will give away Mabira regardless of people’s cries is another confirmation that big people with big power do big evil and know they are doing it.
Yes, some people have argued that Mabira is just one forest in Uganda and in any case, it is very easy to replace a forest but Isn’t that like saying that because an individual locust doesn’t mean to wipe out the entire crop that we should try to stop the hoard of them. Cutting down trees or rain forests, bodes ill for the long-term survival of the human species. Some 25% of the world’s oxygen is generated in the rainforests. As a matter of our own survival it is imperative that every resource not be used up, but that instead sustainable methods be implemented.
What use is short-term success if it guarantees long-term failure? Isn’t it better to implement methods that are good for us now and later? The fact is that cutting down a forest affects the environment. If we lose forests, we lose the fight against climate change. Global warming and increased temperatures are causing higher winds as well. I read somewhere that Sahara Desert was once a rain forest before man started heating the earth with campfires to cook meat, and suddenly the Desert formed. In this 21st century, we are doing a lot of things to destroy these forests. For instance, we’re ruining the rainforest by using too much toilet paper. It may sound funny to a lot of people but it is true. The sky is just falling into pieces on a daily basis and we are doing very little to revert the process.
For Mabira Forest, there was an abrupt forest loss of about 24% between 1976 and 1986 (27,421 to 20,977 ha) due to encroachers. I guess the rebels against Iddil Amin and Milton Obote 2 governments might have also cooked a lot of food in the bushes using firewood at the time. The encroachers originated from the neighbouring districts of mainly Kamuli and Iganga. The trend of encroachment was reversed between 1988 and 1989 when all the encroachers were evicted and an ambitious programme of rehabilitating the forest through re-afforestation was embarked on by the forest department in 1989. We are now surprised that the same government that saw the need to protect the forest is now gearing towards destroying it.
Fact is, the economy is entirely too large and complex for human minds to comprehend. Government policy does have noticeable and to some extent predictable effects on the economy. President Museveni ‘cleaned’ up the treasury during this year’s presidential campaigns and he has been dishing out a lot of money to save his men , particularly, Basajjabalaba, whose businesses are always in trouble. May be the money has run out, and now it is time to dish out state land. Our Nation is being sold down the river to save Museveni’s legacy of mismanagement of resources.
Mabira is a tourist attraction and it cannot continue to generate us income with leaders who see it as a cancer to sugarcane production. Mabira is endowed with about 312 trees and shrub species. Approximately 47% of Uganda’s tree species grow in Mabira, including five rare species. There are more than 287 birds including the threatened Nahan’s francolin (Francolinus nahani); 23 small mammals, vervet monkeys and baboons as well as two arboreal primate species; 218 butterfly species and 97 large moth species. It is illegal to practice medicine without a license in Uganda. It is too bad that Museveni, simply because he is president, is given a license to manage forests he knows nothing about, and cares even less about.
It is suspected that government’s interest in Mabira is mainly Timber. The timber companies usually cut down the large, mature trees for their profit and what Museveni is attempting to do is let loose the timber companies to make the environmental decisions for us all. Both the timber and sugar companies are simply taking advantage of a poor nation with a corrupt system. Which stable country really gives out land like that as if we are a charity case? They also pay peanuts to the Basoga who are doing most of the sugarcane growing but because our people are poor, they still go along with it.
Profits by definition, are the difference between the market value of a product and the cost of its production. Paying workers little and selling the fruits of their labor for a high price is one way enormous profits can be generated. For instance, if Madhvani can sell a 20 kg sack of sugar in the South Sudan for $150, made in Uganda for about $7 in labor and materials, then the labor was actually worth many times what the laborer was actually compensated for the work. Nonetheles, SCOUL is the least efficient of Uganda’s three main sugar producers – the others are Kakira and Kinyara. Their demand for ‘free’ land is abysimal and should be rejected by all free minded Ugandans.
What the government should do is to turn people already owning land around Mabira and sugar factories into fulltime and -state- supported sugarcane growers. There are a lot of people who own large pieces of land in these areas but it is idle. By transmogrifying a group of such people into market-oriented consumers and laborers in factories, they become sources of profit. In Mabira forest, many of the deforested portions were turned to smallholder agriculture (sharp increase of agriculture in 1986 and 1989 compared to the 1970s).
There is plenty we can do now to preserve human livelihood both now and later. Education, international cooperation, debt forgiveness, technology transfer, introducing sustainable farming methods, setting aside more protected lands, passing and enforcing laws that both protect the environment and encourage economic growth, providing job training, follwoing the Cuban experiment, etc. All this would be much cheaper in the long run than sitting twiddling our thumbs and then having to pay the price later.
Personally, I still don’t believe that Museveni will risk giving away Mabira because what happened on April 12th 2007 will be made to look like a picnic if he goes ahead with this idea. He has tactically created a situation that takes the heat completly off him as the economy is in a totally bad shape. So people have simply forgotten other issues and everybody has jumped on Mabira. Anyway,the Mehta family should look for the 17,540 acres elsewhere, and they need to pay for it. It should not be free as it looks the case now with their current and past demands. In any case, it requires an act of parliament for Museveni to give away this gazette state land. I don’t believe that all the current NRM MPs will allow themselves to be used again and again just because the president serves them food and wine whenever they visit him at State House under these circumstances.
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Abbey Kibirige Semuwemba
Ms Public Health Postgraduate Student in the UK
http://ugandansatheart.org/Ms Public Health Postgraduate Student in the UK
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