Biofuel plantations fuel strife in Uganda

energy


A row over the conversion of rainforests into biofuel plantations is creating a grave political crisis for a country until now seen as a beacon for democracy in Africa. The issue has brought to a head the simmering conflicts between short-term economic gains and the conservation of vital natural resources in the continent.
The president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, is this week pressing ahead with plans to give a large chunk of one of the country’s last protected forests to a sugar cane company so it can expand its operations. The Sugar Corporation of Uganda, which is owned by Ugandan Asians, wants to expand production to cash in on the booming global market in sugar for biofuels.
The crisis reached boiling point last week when a demonstration against the plan in the capital Kampala turned into an ugly race riot. Asian shops were ransacked, an Asian was stoned to death and police killed two demonstrators.
The demonstrations have resumed this week, with hundreds of defenders of the forest beaten up by squads of vigilantes known as kiboko, which local media claim are backed by the government.
The forest has become such a controversial issue in part because it is regarded by the dominant Buganda people as the home of their ancestral spirits. But in recent days the protestors have been joined by politicians of all parties and the country’s archbishops.
Rare species
The Mabira forest covers 32,000 hectares and is home to hundreds of tree species as well as rare monkeys and the prized Tit-hylia bird. Museveni wants to hand over a quarter of the forest to sugar corporations.
The forest sits on the watershed of two tributaries of the River Nile. There are fears that chopping down so many trees will reduce local rainfall and further empty Lake Victoria, whose persistent low levels have caused major reductions in power supplies from Ugandan hydro-electric power stations in the past two years.
In a letter to MPs about the forest plans made public this week, Museveni said: “It is more difficult for a backward country to guard against environmental degradation than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.”
Meanwhile the country’s environment ministers have backed the president. Jesca Eriyo said that poor Ugandans were destroying eight times as much forest every year for farmland and firewood as would be lost to the sugar project. “If you don’t create jobs, the poor will encroach on the forests,” Eriyo said.
Disappearing forests
At independence 40 years ago, a fifth of Uganda was forested. Today the figure is just 7%.
This is the second row over plans by the Ugandan government to raze its surviving rainforests. In November 2006, five senior scientists at the National Forest Authority – including its director Olay Bjella, a Norwegian national – resigned in protest against the sale of the Bugala forest reserve on an island in Lake Victoria to an Asian-owned palm oil company, Bidco.
“With international palm oil and sugar prices rising as the demand for biofuel kicks in, events in Uganda would seem to be the shape of things to come,” says James Mayers of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development. He adds that the annexing of the two forests “contravenes the UN Convention of Biological Diversity, to which Uganda is a signatory.”