Losers and Winners of climate change

Washed away: A bridge in the Karamoja region that was washed away by floods in 2004 (file photo)

By Peter Wamboga-Mugirya

The new report by UK-based international charity, OXFAM G.B on the effects of climate change reveals that there are winners and losers; unfortunately Uganda is among the losers.

The report which was launched in Kampala on July 17, 2008 entitled: “Turning Up the Heat: Climate Change and Poverty in Uganda,” shows how some of the developed countries, the largest culprits at polluting the world, are ironically welcoming the climate change phenomenon.

“This is true to some extent for some farmers in some societies. For instance, Britain is hailing the resurrection of a native wine industry as temperatures rise. In Nepal, farmers are growing bigger and tastier apples than ever before,” says the report published last June.

In the report and its accompanying video documentary, Oxfam presents the voices of rural and urban poor men and women who have suffered as a result of increasing droughts, floods, epidemics and food insecurity caused by climate change. It particularly notes that people in Uganda, whose contribution to global warming has been miniscule, are feeling the impacts of climate change first and worst, adding that what is being experienced in Britain and Nepal, is not the case in Uganda. “Yofesi Baluku, Executive Director of Karughe Farmers Partnership in Kasese district, western Uganda, on the foothills of Mount Rwenzori says local varieties have disappeared due to changes in climate,” the report further says, adding: “Because of the short rains, we plant crops that mature fast. That is why some pumpkin and cassava varieties that need a lot of rain have disappeared.”

Oxfam quotes Florence Mbejuna, a farmer in the western Uganda district of Bundibugyo concurring with Yofesi Baluku. She says: “Cassava no longer yields anything yet the beans have also failed.”

Co-operation (EAC) member states of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, as well as The Sudan and Seychelles. It will also address a wide range of issues including, climate change, energy security, natural resource conflict, food security, pollution, gender related issues in environment and human security and sustainable livelihoods. Uganda’s minister for Internal Affairs, Dr Ruhakana Rugunda told a stakeholder meeting that environmental crime now ranks second after drug trafficking among the trans-border crimes committed around the world.

The East African reported that estimates from the US Justice Department and that of international crime syndicates across the world gross between US$21b - US$31b annually from hazardous waste dumping, smuggling of illegal material and, exploiting and trafficking protected natural resources.

The project will provide training to police officers in the region on investigating and prosecuting environmental criminals ■

A major public opinion survey expected to yield an objective feedback from a diversity of opinion leaders about the 10-year-old Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), is underway in all the nine countries. EnviroConserve AFRICA can reveal that the survey, which started in July, is being conducted by a team of independent researchers commissioned by NBI, in collaboration with the World Bank and governments of NBI member-states. The survey is planned to offer qualitative assessment of views of opinion leaders in all the riparian states, according to selected opinion leaders identified by the Ugandan Minister of Water and Environment also current chairperson of the Nile Council of Ministers, Mrs. Maria Mutagamba.

The survey—regarded as extremely important by the nine governments—comes at a time when NBI begins to contemplate how it can achieve meaningful results from its shared vision, heavilyfunded programmes and projects and about its future. On the other hand, the Nile as a shared resource is under intense pressure from a rapidly exploding population, adverse effects of climate change and encroachments in the riparian states of Burundi, DR Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia and Kenya. Others are Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda ■