Green Livelihoods Alliance 2 Uganda

Uganda covers an area of 24.1 million hectares of which 82% is mainland, 14% is open water and 4% is permanent swamp. It is endowed with diversity of animal and plant species and ranks among the top ten most bio-diverse countries in the world. Uganda’s economy is heavily dependent on biodiversity including the fishing industry, tourism (from wildlife biodiversity), livestock industry, commercial and subsistence use of medicinal plants, and ecotourism, among others. The Ministry of Water and Environment, in 2019, estimated forest cover at 12.4 per cent (or 2.9 million hectares) of its total land area, down from 4.9 million hectares in 1990, reducing due to deforestation and forest degradation. Forests contribute 7.5 percent to Gross Domestic Product and play a big role in increasing agricultural productivity, supporting livelihoods, being a backbone to the tourism industry and the combat to climate change. As Uganda pursues middle income status, it is faced with vagaries of development and the associated social injustices, characterized by abuse of environment and human rights, degradation of natural resources and restrictions imposed on civic spaces. The escalation of climate change impacts as forested land that regulates micro-climate is taken up by oil and gas exploitation and related infrastructure, converted into agro-commodity plantations, which reduces the resilience of communities to impacts of climate change. The other issues include trade in charcoal which accelerates deforestation in un-protected areas, power imbalances between men and women that ruins women’s enjoyment of their full rights, restrictions on civic space for environment and human rights defenders and the need to contribute towards the attainment of the National Determined Contributions. The Green livelihoods alliance will work in the Albertine Graben, an ecologically diverse region of Uganda. The region has a number of challenges including oil and gas exploitation and the associated infrastructure development, increasing levels of illegal trade in forest products, interest by the state to develop hydro-power plants in an ecologically sensitive environment and expansion of agrocommodities in the region despite its ecological, tourism and trans-boundary importance.