We must invest more in wetland conservation

The Uganda Wetlands Atlas estimates that wetlands in Wakiso cover 8.6 per cent of the land, with most of the permanent wetlands found in Entebbe Municipality and Busiro County, on the shores of Lake Victoria. FILE PHOTO

What you need to know:

  • The issue: Wetland destruction
  • Our view: To reverse this trend, there must be political will, rigorous implementation of environmental laws and adequate investment in efforts to conserve our wetlands.

In November last year, Daily Monitor published a comprehensive four-part series on “The disappearing wetlands of Wakiso District”.

According to the story, environmentalists predict that the wetlands in Wakiso will disappear within a few years because massive infrastructural development, urban migration, a messy land tenure system, institutional weaknesses of the national environment body, and the district land office are tipping the scales in favour of degradation.

The Uganda Wetlands Atlas estimates that wetlands in Wakiso cover 8.6 per cent of the land, with most of the permanent wetlands found in Entebbe Municipality and Busiro County, on the shores of Lake Victoria. However, many people living in and around Wakiso earn their living from the wetlands in the district through sand and clay mining, plus papyrus, timber and medicinal plant harvesting.

Just a year after we published the series, environmentalists have expressed concern over the increasing rate of wetland encroachment in Entebbe Municipality. They cite Namiiro, the only rich wetland in the municipality, which has also been encroached on, exposing residents to consequences of environmental degradation besides affecting the aquaculture.

Other wetlands in Entebbe like Mabamba and Nambigirwa have also been heavily degraded because people have constructed residential houses and business premises while others are carrying out farming and quarry activities on the wetlands.

As Mr Frank Mulamuzi, the executive director of the National Association of Professional Environmentalists noted in an interview with this newspaper last week, if no steps are taken, fish stocks in Lake Victoria will dwindle. This, he says, is because wetlands are natural sponges that filter flood water before it enters the lake, so the more people settle there the more the lake suffers from siltation and this has had a negative impact on the quality of water and fish stocks. Worse still, the lake is getting contaminated with solid wastes following the degradation of the wetlands.

As wetland degradation continues countrywide, there is a dilemma of development versus conservation. According to projections by the Wetlands Management Department in the Ministry of Water and Environment, in 1994 the wetland coverage in Uganda was 15.6 per cent but this was down to 8.4 per cent by December 2016. This is a result of various activities carried out by encroachers on wetlands.

To reverse this trend, there must be political will, rigorous implementation of environmental laws and adequate investment in efforts to conserve our wetlands.

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