Race on to restore Uganda’s forests

SPGS to the rescue

In response, the NFA has for almost two decades been licensing private tree farmers on land earmarked for commercial tree growing under an EU-funded project.

About 200,000 hectares were set aside for the project called the Saw Log Production Grant Scheme (SPGS). To date about 60% of that chunk of land has been planted with both broadleaved and coniferous trees. In comparison, Okello says NFA has planted about 3,000 hectares.

The commercial tree farmers are licensed to plant trees for timber as buffers next to protected forests and in unplanted parts of government owned forest reserves.

So far the NFA has licensed 4,000 private local and international investors, including Britain’s New Forest Company, Busoga Forest Company, Norway’s Green Resources and Germany’s Global Woods.

Denis Mutaryebwa, the Assistant project coordinator for the SPGS at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the implementing agency, told The Independent that the project is “extremely good” since it has interested the private sector to invest in commercial forestry.

“We have exceeded the areas which were initially targeted. This shows that people have taken up the tree growing scheme and they are always asking for more support to plant more trees,” he says.

Mutaryebwa told The Independent that although high quality plantations have been established all across the country, the central region especially around the cattle corridor (Luweero, Nakaseke, Nakasongola, Kiboga, Mityana and Mubende Districts) has had a lot of empty forest reserves or woodland restocked. He says the central forest reserves around Mityana, Mpigi, and Mukono have been the most attractive because of being near Kampala.

“The wood products in Kampala tend to sell at relatively higher prices,” he said.

On whether this model of restocking the country’s forests is best, Mutaryebwa told The Independent that forest restoration takes different models.

“You can promote agro forestry; you can also promote plantations, on farm forestry and boundary forestry. Each model chosen depends on the existing physical and topographical structure of the land you want restored,” he says.

Mutaryebwa says trees, indigenous or coniferous, will always perform their ecological functions.  “If you plant a tree today and you cut it after five or 12 years, it will have performed its environmental functions; it will have given out oxygen to the atmosphere, it would have played its role in the hydrological cycle and it would have contributed to soil erosion prevention,” he says.

“If you leave it, the better for the ecological services but we know that there is an opportunity cost to be borne. This is why there is need to maintain the natural forests but also promote commercial plantations to create a balance between economic and ecological functions of these trees.”

Meanwhile, Attilio Pacifici, the head of the European Union Delegation in Uganda is more measured when assessing the impact of the SPGS contribution to forest recovery.

“Protection of natural forests cannot be substituted with establishing commercial plantations of a few tree species, as is currently the case. We have to make sure that the natural forests—what is left of them—is untouchable.”

“Providing alternative sources of wood from fast growing tree plantations is a way of reducing pressure on natural forests on both private land and Central Forest Reserves (CFR) but it is not an end in itself,” he says.

Miracle needed to restore forests

However, many experts The Independent has talked to say Uganda needs a miracle to restore its forest cover to the 1990 levels.

“We keep asking ourselves whether we can really restore Uganda’s forests to the 1990 level by 2040,” says Okello as he stares at his datasheet.

For starters, Okello says, barring a miraculous halt to the country’s baby boom, the population is only expected to grow bigger.

Dickens Kamugisha, the executive director of the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), a Kampala-based civil society organisation, says the government needs to quickly apply both carrot-incentives and stick-penalties and the law to save the forests. He says the government must stop issuing titles in protected forests.

And to reverse deforestation, Kamugisha says, the government must get communities on forested private land out of poverty by offering other survival options.

“Remember, the trees in themselves are not yet very profitable due to middle men involved who cheat famers. Forests cannot be conserved by famers for just conservation’s sake. They must create both direct and indirect benefits to the farmers and communities,” Kamugisha told The Independent.

For Onesmus Mugyenyi, the government will not achieve its lofty aspiration of growing back Uganda’s forest cover to the 1990 level unless it addresses the challenges that have created this deforestation.

“If we don’t address wood fuel and charcoal consumption with the ever growing population, it will be difficult to recover the forest cover.”

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Credits:

This story was supported by Code for Africa and Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism, and was funded by the Global Forest Watch (GFW) with support from the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment (KLD). GFW supports data-driven journalism through its Small Grants Fund Initiative. The publisher maintains complete editorial independence over the stories reported using this data.