Write your abstract here.
Recent
indications show that Ugandans love their
environment so much that they
could even protect it with their blood. Three Ugandans were recently
killed as they took the government on in a violent demonstration
opposing the give away of one of the only surviving forestlands in the
country-Mabira Forest.By Independence, Uganda boasted of nearly 10%
of the total land covered by heavy
forests. Today most of these have
been destroyed by illegal loggers and misguided policy approaches to
development. The President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni believes rather
erroniously that the only direct route to develop a middle class is
through Industrialization and the way to Industrialize is to turn any
space of land, including forest and urban lands into factories!Mabira
Forest occupies a catchment area that nourishes the rivers and lakes
into a healthy climatic resource. Uganda and many areas of Africa has
lately seen the erratic weather patterns that have spelt unreliable
rainfall with disruptive consequences on the agricultural and water
requirements of the population. The water levels in our rivers and
lakes have dropped a record low in living memory and our capacity to
produce hydro electricity on river nile has been negatively affected by
the low water levels. With all these changes happening around them,
most Ugandans, even the most uneducated members of the population are
beginning to see the glaring link between these erratic climatic
behaviour on the one hand and the the destruction of forest on the
other. They know that forests make rain and are a valued resource for
survival on earth by the poor and less privileged people. This
realization coalasced into a Holly alliance between the Ugandan
Herbalists who look at forests as a source of rare herbal medicines and
the Environmentalists who who know through many years of esoteric
pursuits and research, the devastating effects of unbalanced use of the
environmental resources like forests.Thus, when the Ugandan
Cabinet sat and ruled that 7000 acres of Mabira Forest be given away to
an Indian Investor to have trees, some of which as old as a thousand
years, mowed down and replaced with sugar plantations, they questioned
the intelligence of the minds behind this obnoxious decision. They, in
their very ordinary minds, felt that nobody in his clear state of mind
could just have timeless mahoganny trees replaced by grass species like
sugarcanes! The population was mobilized to come up in the
defence of the forest. Young unemployed youth in the surbubs of Kampala
city joined forces with the Environmentalists. The Herbalists and
Tradionalists pitched camp in Mabira Forest itself where rituals to
invoke the wrath of the spirit world against the President and any
other human being that "touches" Mabira Forest. Infact, the rituals
shown on National TVs that involved a sacrifice of a sheep and spilling
its blood menacingly onto the trees were so scarry that am made to
believe, even the President must have been horrified! The
Opposition politicians saw this stupid policy on the
Environment as a
political capital they could use against the government. Because an
Indian came out to be the interested party in this destructive grand
scheme to our envirenment, a few Indians were attacked for this-infact
one Indian who tried defiantly ride through the demonstrators got
killed by the angry crowd who thought he was trying to show his might.
The Demonstrations that saw 3 people killed and 2 others injured sent a
wake up call to the government to give a critical review of their
Policy on Mabira. As it turned out to be, all Ugandans were elated to
see an announcement on TV addressed by the President himself to the
effect that the give away of Mabira Forest had been Halted. This was
the first time I saw Ugandans come out to defend the Forests even at
the point of the bouynet. It became apparent that the three forest
activists who got killed, spilled their blood for the forest of our
country and many Ugandans are prepared to defend the trees within their
environment with their blood if necessary!