In 2016, the Ministry of Water and Environment issued a report that showed that Uganda’s forest cover was 4.9 million hectares in 1990. However, this had reduced to 1.8 million hectares in 2015.

Several other Geographic Information System (GIS) mappings that have since followed also show a serious reduction in the forest cover of the country, and Kyenjojo in particular has been severely affected.

For instance, according to Global Forests Watch (GFW), an online platform that provides data and tools for monitoring forests, between 2000 to 2020, Kyenjojo lost 62,000 hectares of tree cover.

With a value of environmental stewardship in mind, the Joint Effort to Save the Environment (JESE) with funding from Forests of the World started implementing a project titled “Engaging farmers in the restoration of Kibaale-Matiri-Itwara Elephant corridor”, to reverse the situation.

The project is being implemented in the sub counties of Kihura, Kyarusozi, Butunduzi and Kigoyera, and is mainly targeting the farmers who are adjacent to these forest reserves.

Sam Nyakoojo, an agroforestry expert at JESE, explains that the approach being taken in Kyenjojo is the one where farmers are encouraged to integrate high-value crops like cocoa, vanilla and coffee, with indigenous trees. He explains that this is being done to ensure the trees provide shade to the vanilla and cocoa which in turn earns income to the farmers.

“So, it is one way of harnessing restoration because we are looking at cash in form of Cocoa, Coffee and vanilla but also the environment conservation using the indigenous trees like maesopsis, grevillea and others,” Nyakoojo explains.

The JESE agroforestry systems are well designed to meet the requirements of the high-value crops and they are being implemented in three models namely; A1, A2 and A3. The models are dependent on the needs and location of the farmer and the agroforestry system being implemented.

For instance, if the farmer is located near the forest reserve, then the A1 model, which looks at more trees than the crops, is used.

“If the agroforestry system is near the farmer’s household, then we use fewer trees with much high-value crops,” Nyakoojo explains.

So far, there is good adoption of the models. Godfrey Emmanuel is one of those farmers who has already adopted the agroforestry system. The resident of Butunduzi says he was a usual farmer engaged in the growing of beans, maize and such other crops until JESE introduced him to high-value crops.

Emmanuel says that other than planting trees that have grown so well, his vanilla and coffee are looking so nice too and he expects to harvest soon.

“From the first harvest, I might get like 15 kilograms and each kilogram is Shs 50,000. That will be some good income,” Emmanuel says.

But that is not all. He also grows some indigenous trees like Maesopsis Emiini (Musizi) and is expectant that around 8 years from now, he will also be earning from them.

“JESE gave us a lot of advice on coffee and how to dry it. I used to harvest one sack of coffee and at times I would even fail to get the one sack. I can now harvest three sacks when the season has gone well. I hope in future, I will not be the same way I’m today,” Emmanuel says.

Deus Muhwezi is a resident of Kawaruju parish in Kihura sub county. He explains that before JESE intervention, he was earning little money from his agricultural produce. He says he didn’t know about vanilla or cocoa and agroforestry in general, but he is now an expert.

“But I got a chance and JESE selected me to be a Community Based Trainer. So I was selected to have a model agroforestry garden. I started with cocoa and vanilla and I’m about to harvest,” Muhwezi says.

To Muhwezi, agroforestry is not just helping him grow high-value crops. He says he also has an apiary and the trees in the system provide the bees with the nectar.

“Actually, in this area, I’m the leading producer of honey because of this agroforestry. Like last season of harvest, there are farmers who didn’t get even a kilogram of honey, but for me I managed to get like 40 kilograms because I planted trees like cadiandra; they have flowers all the time. So, bees keep there. So I see I’m getting a lot of money through this agroforestry, there is a time I managed to buy a cow after making over Shs 1.8 million from honey,” Muhwezi explains.

CHALLENGES

Ensuring total protection of the environment is a huge task. Non-governmental organizations that partner with JESE like Kyaninga Forest Foundation (KFF), Natural Resources Defense Initiative (NRDI) and others are doing their best to ensure forests and other natural resources are well protected.

But like the Kyenjojo Resident District Commissioner (RDC), Julian Ayesiga, recently stated, the task is so big since some of the encroachers are the same people who are supposed to be giving the protection.

“There is a huge cartel that has infiltrated even us the security. You find that if someone is getting timbers from Muhangi, our own officers are in the know and you will find they have planted some people along the way and as you are moving, they will tell them that the RDC is there. By the time you reach there, you hit a dead end,” said Ayesiga at a meeting of stakeholders in environmental protection that was held in Kyenjojo recently.

Also, over a year ago, JESE in collaboration with NBS TV, carried out an investigation which exposed the people behind the loggers’ cartel. It was found that even when timbers are cut and authorities informed, they do not respond on time and in other cases, even the timbers that are taken as exhibits to police stations end up disappearing without a trace.

These challenges coupled with the poor mindset about agroforestry among some farmers adjacent to forests are still hindering the successful restoration of environment.

CALL TO GOVERNMENT

Nyakoojo says what is being implemented in Kyenjojo is just a pilot and the goal is to ensure that government adopts the same models and apply them to a wider area.

“So, what we are putting in place should be able to create learning so that the government learns and adopts the implementation of the systems into their annual budgets and plans.,” Nyakoojo says.

The Mpanga Gorge is located right at the north-eastern tip of Queen Elizabeth National Park, allowing the river Mpanga to empty into Lake George.

Join For Water and JESE—Joint Effort to Save the Environment—have been working in the area since November 2014 and have already achieved some success through the installation of a water RAM pump and cattle trough, tree seedling nurseries, and carrying out public education on the need to restore the degraded ecosystem and protection of the Mpanga Cycad. The noticeable improvements are in the reduced destruction of the landscape as farmers participate in conservation more than they used before.

The distribution of indigenous trees and fruit trees, the replanting of over 20,000 Cycad seedlings, and installation of demarcation pillars have helped to raise the plant profile as well as stabilize the steep slopes and the river bank.

Endangered Cycads

Mpanga Gorge is the home of the last remaining population of the critically endangered Mpanga Falls Cycad, Encephalartos whitelockii. Cycads, being gymnosperms, represent one of the earliest forms of plant life on Earth and have existed for over 340 million years. However, there are currently only 344 species of cycad left in the world and nearly all of them are facing extinction due to loss of habitat and poaching. Furthermore, the Mpanga Falls Cycad’s status changed from endangered to critically endangered in the last 10 years.

Seedlings are the foundation for many earthly ecosystems and are a critical consideration and investment for implementing global forest and landscape restoration programs. Join For Water in partnership with JESE have pledged to restore degraded sites in Mpanga gorge during the next 5 years (up to 2027), necessitating many millions of established plants. Although natural regeneration and direct seeding will likely meet a portion of that need, large quantities of high-quality, nursery-grown seedlings are also required. Join For Water and JESE have already established Nursery beds in Mpanga catchment to produce high-quality plants to meet the desired program goal.

The role of the nurseries

The misconception that growing plants is easy is widespread. In reality, however, plant production requires specialized knowledge and attention to many important factors to be able to deliver adequate quantities of high-quality plants from appropriate genetic seed sources, in this case the scientifically managed nurseries where high quality seedlings are obtained.

When propagating quality seedlings, nursery attendants must be knowledgeable in the bodily part functions, size, shape and structure of plants, phenology, genetics, and ecotype of each species through its nursery stages of germination, active growth, and hardening. Based on those characteristics, they can choose to propagate from seeds or from vegetative material and apply specific culturing techniques (e.g. irrigation, fertilization, pest management, etc.) accordingly to achieve target specifications based on conditions at the out planting (transplanting) site. This is exactly the professional input into the established nurseries in the Mpanga Gorge with most of this professional assistance provided by Tusiime Lawrence, the JESE Forester who works and guides all the nursery attendants on the important techniques to produce healthy plant seedlings.

These plant nurseries provide extension services to educate landowners and nursery attendants on selecting appropriate species and provenances, establishing target plant characteristics, ensuring genetic diversity, maintaining seedling quality, and using proper planting techniques to optimize long-term out planting success in the landscape.

Notably and very important, such a professional input in community nurseries inadvertently turn around the livelihood tides for prosperous livelihoods of local farmers that actively participate in the activities of the plant nurseries. The nurseries offer significant employment prospects of the actors involved.

To most schools in Uganda, finding a reliable, environment-friendly, and cost-effective technology to prepare meals for the learners is still an uphill task. This is because most learning institutions in the country are used to the three-stone cooking fireplace or other ancient technologies, which actually consume a lot of firewood. But that is not all. Such traditional technologies emit too much smoke which affects the health of the cooks, leads to deforestation and associated problems and the carbon they emit is a danger to climate.

To solve this challenge, European Union Trust Fund (EUTF) launched a project titled, “Strengthening resilience through enhanced local disaster risk management capacities”, that is being implemented in the districts of Isingiro and Kyegegwa by; Oxfam, Joint Effort to Save the Environment (JESE),  and Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group (CSBAG). Under the project, a new technology of Institutional Energy Saving Cook Stoves is being piloted in schools, health centres and communities in these districts, and the results are already impressive.

At St. Rafael Vocational and Secondary school in Birunduma village, Kyarubambura parish, Rugaaga sub county, Isingiro district in South Western Uganda, the school would inject over Shs 3 million into buying fuel wood per term. To the head teacher, Mr. Mucunguzi Chrispine, this amount was too much, the budget ate deeply into their coffers and the whole process would directly contribute to deforestation in the surrounding villages.

Mucunguzi says that when the project started, and Institutional Energy Saving Cook Stove was constructed at the school with funds from the project. The materials needed for the construction included fire and ordinary type of cement, metal works, bricks and tiles among others, and all of them were locally sourced.

After the construction was completed, Mucunguzi notes that they started using the cook stove and realized that it came with a number of benefits. For instance, in one term, they would use 10 trucks of firewood but the number has since drastically reduced to 3 trucks.

“It has increasingly become better since we started using the Institutional Energy Saving Cook Stove at our school. Before project intervention, the school could buy 10 trucks of fuel wood, each at UGX 300,000 on a termly [three months] basis. This amount translated into UGX3,000,000 per year in terms of wood fuel costs. However, this trend has since changed following the construction and subsequent use of the energy cook stove,” Mucunguzi says.

He adds: “Today the school, which has 300 students and 30 members of staff, only buys 3 trucks of fuel wood per term, which reduces the total termly cost to only Shs 900,000 instead of the Shs 3,000,000 per term.”

But it is not only St. Rafael Vocational and Secondary school that is celebrating. The same cook stoves have been constructed at Mpara Secondary School in Kyaka II, Bujubuli School of the Deaf and also around host communities in the two districts, and they are all appreciative of the rapid impact they have on the energy costs. They say the costs on fuel wood has reduced by around 60 per cent.

At Rwekubo Health Centre IV in Isingiro district, another Institutional Energy Saving Cook Stove was established and the users are equally appreciative.

According to Christopher Busiinge, the Head of Natural Resources Department at JESE under which the project falls, these energy saving cook stoves come with a number of benefits.  He says, when compared with the traditional three-stone cooking fire place, the energy saving cook stoves lead to reduced carbon emissions, have a higher heat retention capacity, free from smoke and cooks faster.

“The impact of this intervention is extremely exciting and if extended to other schools in the country, we shall reduce on carbon emission, schools will have their expenditure on firewood greatly reduced and the environment will ultimately be saved from deforestation,” Busiinge says.

He also explains that the cost of constructing the cook stoves is not too high when compared to the benefits they come with.

“For starters, it may cost between Shs 8-10 million shillings and JESE is available to give the technical guidance as and when it is needed by institutions that need to have the same technology,” he pledges.

WOODLOTS

Under this project, it is not just about using Institutional Energy Saving Cook Stoves. A lot of emphasis is also being put on how to replace the vegetation that was lost through deforestation. Like Busiinge explains, it can be hard to promote the cook stoves without having a clear source of firewood for them as it would still encourage deforestation which is against the project goals.

To act as an example, a total of 53 hectares of woodlots have been established under the project in Isingiro and Kyegegwa to provide firewood that would otherwise be got from natural forests and lead to their destruction.

Busiinge encourages other institutions that plan to take on the technology to also establish some woodlots around them because they have several other advantages like microclimate rejuvenation other than providing firewood.

Like in Isingiro, the intervention of woodlot is averting the high rates of deforestation caused by the high influx of refugees from the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Arguably, both education institutions and the influx of refugees in Uganda is continuously eating into the few available forest resources and there is solid evidence indicating that the use of these stoves and establishing woodlots can change the situation for the better.

To JESE and the partner organizations, if the cook stoves are adopted, institutions will not just reduce on their expenses but will also have played a key role in rehabilitating and managing natural resources and contributing to environmental sustainably and in the long term avert risks associated with environmental destruction.