Uganda: Will the Green Crusade Take Off?

Kampala — WHEN Maria Mutagamba, the environment minister planted a ceremonial tree at Kumi to commemorate the UN World Environment Day two years ago, she did not know that it would be accorded scanty respect. But when she returned to check on her tree, what she saw was not pleasant.

"Can you imagine that the goats had eaten my tree?" says a visibly disturbed Mutagamba. "I could not believe that the place as bare as Kumi could afford to lose a tree carelessly like that."

It is not easy for government officials to promote the national tree planting campaign that is expected to start in March. The campaign is being spear-headed by Mutagamba and her two deputies, Jessica Eriyo and Jennifer Namuyangu to plant trees on International Women's Day (March 8), World Forestry Day (March 21), Labour Day (May 1) and World Youth Day (August 12).

Paul Asiimwe, a land management specialist at the National Forestry Authority (NFA), says: "It is an intervention you have to look at with sustainability in mind. How do you plant the seedlings and leave them to any body to care for them?"

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Tha Painting is by Benjamin William Leader

Scientists discover new forest with undiscovered species on Google Earth

A British-led expedition found 7,000 hectares of forest, rich in biodiversity, known as Mount Mabu

The mountainous area of northern Mozambique in southern Africa had been overlooked by science due to inhospitable terrain and decades of civil war in the country.

However, while scrolling around on Google Earth, an internet map that allows the viewer to look at satellite images of anywhere on the globe, scientists discovered an unexpected patch of green.

A British-led expedition was sent to see what was on the ground and found 7,000 hectares of forest, rich in biodiversity, known as Mount Mabu.

In just three weeks, scientists led by a team from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew found hundreds of different plant species, birds, butterflies, monkeys and a new species of giant snake.

The samples which the team took are now back in Britain for analysis.

So far three new butterflies and one new species of snake have been discovered but it is believed there are at least two more new species of plants and perhaps more new insects to discover.

Julian Bayliss, a scientist for Kew based in the region, discovered Mount Mabu while searching on Google Earth for a possible conservation project. He was looking at areas of land 5,400ft (1,600m) above sea level where more rainfall means there is likely to be forest.

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The painting is by Benjamin Williams Leader

Uganda should join global tree planting campaign

He who does not heed advice pays expensively. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warns that over 80% of Uganda will become a desert in less than 100 years if the current climate changes are not addressed.

Global warming and Greenhouse gases have caused temperatures to rise, with south-western Uganda being the most affected. This is evidenced by the reduction of the water table in Mbarara, the declining of water levels in Katonga wetland system, Lake Mburo, River Rwizi, Kitagata hot springs, Lake Nakivale, the persistent droughts since 1990 and the decline in food production.

The FAO representative in Uganda, Percy Misika, says temperatures are still rising and over 80% of the country could turn into a desert soon. Unless the trend is reversed, global warming could rise to between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100 (The New Vision, September 18. )

We are already experiencing the consequences of environmental degradation.

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Ghana: Ghanaians Urged to Protect Environment

The Akyem Abuakwa Youth Movement (AAYoM), a on- partisan and religious youth-oriented human resource development capacity building organisation, has called on Ghanaians across the country, to cultivate the habit of planting, at least, one tree every year.

According to them, in order to preserve the trees, and other natural resources that were preserved by our predecessors, there was the need for Ghanaians to make it a point to replant those trees which were cut, for the sake of the survival of generations to come.

Quoting the popular cliché, when the last tree dies the last man will die, the Movement appealed to the good people of Ghana, not to lose sight of the fact that in our quest for survival, we should not endanger the existence and survival of the next generation, by degrading the environment.

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The painting is by Nancy Merkle

It’s tree planting time again

It's national Arbor Week next week and everyone has been urged to plant a tree. Joburg is taking up the lead, and will plant more than 60 000 trees in September.

ANOTHER sapling will be added to Madiba's collection of birthday trees in Thokoza Park, Soweto, to mark his 90th birthday, and the 90 990th tree planted for the Soweto Greening project.

Taking place on 4 September, the occasion will also mark the start of a month of tree planting for the City of Johannesburg as part of national Arbor Week.

"On the day, 1 000 trees will be planted at various institutions around Thokoza," says Jenny Moodley, the media spokesperson for City Parks. Madiba will be present to cut the ceremonial ribbon around the wild olive that will be planted in his honour.

In July 2007, the City planted 89 trees in Thokoza Park to honour Nelson Mandela during his birthday month, with the promise that a new tree would be added each year.

The tree that Madiba will be planting will be for ceremonial purposes only as City Parks has already planted all these trees, Moodley confirms. The more than 90 000 trees have been planted along main arterials leading into Soweto as well as throughout the township to green one of Johannesburg's most populated, but barren areas.

And it is a landmark target for the Soweto Greening project which is now approaching its third year. The project officially kicked off in September 2006 when Executive Mayor Amos Masondo planted the first 6 000 trees.

The target for the project is to plant 200 000 trees in the next three years. The Soweto Greening project has since also been extended to other marginalised areas, Moodley confirms.

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Bunyoro Kingdom in tree-planting drive

BUNYORO-KITARA Kingdom has launched a tree-planting campaign in an effort to prevent environmental degradation.

The Prime Minister, Dr. Aliba Emmanuel Kiiza, said they recently obtained funds from the UN Development Programme for the campaign that will cover Bunyoro region.

He was speaking last week after launching the planting of over 1,000 pine trees at Kagadi town in Kibaale district.
The premier, who represented the king, Solomon Gafabusa Iguru, said their plan was to turn Bunyoro into a green region to curb global warming.

Iguru went abroad on official duties.
On another matter, Kiiza urged the people of Bunyoro to plan how to benefit from oil exploration in the region instead of making “unnecessary noise” over oil shares.

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Deforestation a key part of UN global treaty talks

AFIASO, Ghana (AP) — Years ago, no one thought twice about felling the rainforest around this village in West Africa.

Land was cleared, cocoa and palm oil were planted, and the hamlet survived. But the wind blows stronger across the fields and scrub these days, and the rainfall is heavier than the elders remember.

"Before, the weather wasn't so hot," says the village chief, Nana Opare Ababio.

Afiaso, with 620 people, is on the border of Ghana's Kakum National Park, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) from Accra, where a 160-nation U.N. conference is discussing how the issues of deforestation and conservation fit into a new global treaty on climate change.

As delegates ponder the big picture, sometimes it helps to see the direct impact these issues have on villages like Afiaso.

An estimated 32 million acres (13 million hectares) of forest are lost to loggers, farmers and fires every year, according to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization. Most of it is in the Amazon, in Southeast Asia and in West Africa.

Trees, and especially the diverse vegetation of tropical rainforests, soak up and store carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. Decaying or burning trees releases carbon into the air. Scientists estimate that deforestation accounts for up to 20 percent of the carbon added by man to the atmosphere.

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Nigeria: Ali Tackles Desertification

How to sto[ desert from spreading? Plant Trees. See this news from Nigeria

In its effort to improve the living conditions of its people, Yobe State government recently prepared a new "policy plan" on halting the rapid spread and devastating effects of desertification and its encroachment on arable land and oasis that are being buried by sand dunes.

The policy plan tagged: "Taming the Desert with Gum Arabic, Neem Seedlings" was a holistic and continuous aforestation project that would prevent the advancement of desertification in the state.

Speaking to newsmen in his office in Damaturu, the state capital, the Commissioner for Environment, Alhaji Musa Dumburi, said that the new policy on fighting desertification and its effects on the people living in 10 council areas was first, to create an enabling environment for the establishment of five nurseries at Damaturu, Potiskum, Bayamari and Nguru, 250 kilometres north-west of the state capital.

According to him, each nursery was to raise not less than 100,000 tree seedlings of gum arabic, neem, pawpaw, procephis, mahogany, citrus, mango and cashew.

He explained that, out of the 500,000 seedlings, 60 per cent or 300,000 seedlings were of gum arabic and neem seedlings while the remaining ones were of other economic trees that could withstand the harsh desert weather conditions.

He said that since the desert encroachment in the state was at 0.6 kilometres per annum, each of the 17 local government areas would be allocated with 1,000 seedlings of gum arabic for the establishment of plantations.

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South Africa: Public Called to Plant More Trees

The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry has called on all South Africans to join in celebrating this year's Arbor Week by planting trees in their communities to mitigate the effects of climate change.

This year Arbor Week is themed "Plant trees - save our planet" and will take place from 1 September.

Tree planting remains one of the most cost-effective ways to address climate change. Trees and forests play a vital role in regulating the climate since they absorb carbon dioxide.

Deforestation, in turn, accounts for over 20 percent of the carbon dioxide humans generate, rivaling the emissions from other sources.

Trees also play a crucial role in providing a range of products and services to rural and urban populations, including food, timber, fibre, medicines and energy as well as soil fertility, water and biodiversity conservation.

Arbor Week will set the stage for similar events around the country in which see various stakeholders including government departments, non-government organisations, schools and communities participating in tree planting.

The Arbor Week campaign aims to promote improved knowledge of trees particularly indigenous trees and their importance as well as highlight the vital roles of trees in the natural environment.

The necessity for the public to contribute to the greening of South Africa by planting and caring for trees will also be emphasised.

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Fencing of Mau Forest to cost Sh40m

Welcome News from Kenya

The Government is seeking Sh40 million to erect a fence and prevent further destruction of Mau Forest.

Environment minister John Michuki said on Tuesday that the 40 kilometre stretch would run along the original boundary of the forest marked in the 1980s.

The fencing, the minister added, would start after 1,962 of the people now living in the controversial forest have been settled elsewhere.

Others in the area have been given notice to leave since the Government had only identified the 1,962 as bona fide land owners.

“We shall use recycled plastic posts to fence the land. No trees will be felled in that forest,” said Mr Michuki.

The minister also said that representatives of Rhino Charge, which has been fencing the Aberdares Forest, had met ministry officials on Wednesday last week and discussed the new project.

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Uganda: VP Calls for Tree Planting in Karamoja

Vice President Prof. Gilbert Bukenya has called for a tree planting campaign in Karamoja to save the region from desertification.

According to a statement from the VP's office, Prof. Bukenya, who is on a two week tour of Karamoja to popularise the Prosperity for All programme in Moroto, Kotido, Abim and Kaabong districts, made the appeal while launching upland rice growing in Lolelia Sub-county in Kaabong District.


Prof. Bukenya said over grazing was one of the reasons for the impending desertification. He said reforestation will save Karamoja from becoming a desert.

"There was overwhelming demand for rice seeds from the women and youth who had already opened up their grounds for the planting season and were awaiting his arrival," the statement reads in part.

Article here

African 'tree of life' recast as European superfruit

FANDENE, Senegal (AFP) — In Senegal, villagers have always known about the health benefits of baobab fruit, which only now have been discovered by Europe in what could spell magic for localities like Fandene.

The ancient, hardy species also known as the "tree of life" is scattered across the African savannah, some said to date back to the time of Christ.

Locals use nearly every part of the tree, whose processed fruit was approved for European import last month.

"You use the monkey bread fruit if you have a belly ache," said farmer Aloyse Tine, using the local name for baobab fruit. "If you're tired you eat the leaves, they are good for you."

The seeds can be pressed to extract oil used for cooking and the bark can be used to make ropes. In the past, the hollow bark was also used to bury "griots", a special West African cast of poets, musicians and sorcerers.

Farmer Tine, like others, used to lug his fruit to sell in the market in the nearby town of Thies.

Three years ago, he started selling instead to the Baobab Fruit Company, a Senegalese firm run by three Italians. It is the country's only industrialised producer of dried baobab fruit pulp, which it exports for use in cosmetics and certain dietary supplements.

The new income has already made changes. It "allows me to send my kids to school," he said.

Enter PhytoTrade Africa, a non-governmental organisation that focuses on developing fair trade and environmentally sustainable natural products.

Sensing potential, it launched in 2006 the process that would open European Union markets to this nutritious African oddity. Under EU rules, any "novel" food -- one not commonly consumed in Europe before 1997 -- requires special approval for use in the 27-member bloc.

"Approval for the baobab is fantastic news for Africa," said PhytoTrade's Cyril Lombard after the EU decision.

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Kenyan courts consider terminating biofuel plans

The Kenyan courts are considering halting the first stage of a US$370 million biofuel project that aims to replace up to 20,000 hectares of coastal grassland with irrigated fields of sugarcane.

A judicial review of the project, based at the Tana River Delta on the northern Kenyan coast, was granted last month (11 July) after a campaign from environmental groups such as Nature Kenya and the East Africa Wildlife Society,and nomadic cattle-farming groups.

The project is intended to generate electricity — up to 34 megawatts a day at its peak — from sugar refining and up to 20 million litres of ethanol fuel annually from molasses.

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Sahara’s Sun Power Getting Tapped for European Use

The EU is planning a new supergrid initiative that would harness the massive amount of sun pounding down on the Sahara dessert. The $71 billion plan would take a mere couple of decades to complete, but would supply a significant amount (some report ALL) of the EU’s energy needs. UK’s PM Gordon Brown already supports the idea, which is no surprise considering the new green face he is putting forward, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy is onboard as well.

The project would have a number of farms each generating between 50 and 200 MW through PV or solar thermal concentration, which would travel the thousands of miles back to the EU through high voltage DC transmission lines. All the countries of the EU would share the solar power, along with wind and geothermal power supplied by other EU countries – or if the project does indeed supply all the electricity needed via solar, the wind and geothermal power would be exported. Solar farms in the Sahara would generate up to three times as much electricity as similar sized farms in Europe, says Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European Commission Institute for Energy – which is supposed to explain the smack this project has of shanghai-ing another continent’s land space.

While it seems to be getting some political backing already, I have a hard time imagining it moving forward very quickly, if at all, even though the Sahara does seem like an ideal spot for solar power generation. Considering the advances made in solar thermal concentration, and what little would be needed of the vastness of the Sahara, it is an idea to float.

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Africa's Congo Basin forest aided by satellite tree-felling survey

A project to map every place in the world's second-largest tropical forest where trees have been cut down will be announced today.

A purpose-built camera will be sent into space to record every clearing and logger's track in the Congo Basin in Africa to determine how much of the forest is left.

The camera will be fixed to a satellite and should be operational by the end of 2010 as part of an initiative to save the Central African tropical forest from being chopped down.

At twice the size of France, the Congo Basin forest is exceeded in extent only by the Amazon but it is estimated that loggers, many of them illegal, destroy an area the size of 25,000 football pitches every week.

Forests absorb huge quantities of carbon but it is released when they are cut down and their preservation is regarded as one of the biggest challenges by those trying to slow the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change.

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Uganda: 88-Year-Old Man Plants Mega Forest

AT 88 years old, one would think Melchior Bakamuturaki would not consider investing in a forest that will mature when he is 100-if he makes it. But for this Bushenyi district Green, the passion for the environment is just beginning.

While many Ugandans shun tree business from which they believe they will never benefit in their lifetime, Bakamuturaki has planted six acres of trees and is looking for more land.

"I always had a liking for forests and now I have fulfilled my dream by planting a forest, which will mature in at least 20 years."

But there is an immediate gain from the investment. Bakamuturaki will make money from a new scheme in which farmers earn money from trees in a programme championed by a charity, the International Small Group and Tree-Planting.

"We have been working with farmers to plant trees that absorb carbondioxide emissions and reduce the risks of global warming," said Pauline Kalunda, the executive director.

"In return, the farmers earn money since their trees act as sinks for waste gases emitted by polluting industries," Kalunda says. The Bamuturaki initiative is good news as Uganda commemorates the World Environment Day today.

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Uganda: Army in Tree-Planting Drive

GEN. Katumba Wamala, the commander of the land forces, recently launched a tree-planting drive to replace the vegetation cover that has been destroyed in the north during the LRA insurgency over the past 20 years.

Col. Lucky Kidega, the UPDF 5th Division commander, told Katumba that Pader district gave the army more than 50 acres of land at Patongo sub-county to plant pine trees. He said for the start they would plant trees in 20 acres.

The UPDF 4th Division political commissar, Capt. Emmanuel Ankunda, said Gulu district had given them one hectare of land to plant the pine trees.

"Over time, we have been destroying our tree covers countrywide through construction, burning of charcoal and bricks. We are destroying many trees daily than we are planting.

And the UPDF is not entirely innocent of destroying the tree cover,"said Katumba.

He said the army looks at the tree planting drive as a noble initiative that it can participate in for the future wellbeing of the people.

Katumba said as a forest grower, tree planting should not be a one-time activity, but a routine.

"As we mobilise our people to go back to their homes, let tree- planting be part of the activities we shall do. If you don't want to plant Mvule for wood, then plant mango or avocado trees for fruits," Katumba said.

The army would not only engage in hunting for the LRA rebels but also help the community conserve their environment.

Katumba urged the district authorities at Patongo to encourage returning to camps to plant trees.

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