A study on Climate Change Politics in Uganda has revealed wetlands across the country are faced by severe commercial human activities putting them at a high risk of depletion.
The study conducted by Transparency International Uganda sough to uncover the corruption practices in systems and processes for adaptation and mitigation indicated that activities like fishing, sand mining, rice growing, agriculture, human settlement among others are taking place in wetlands under the watch of environment protection agencies and laws.
According to the report the brick making is the commonest activity in wetlands constituting 86%, it is followed by rice growing (39%), cattle grazing (50% and agriculture (37%). It has been revealed that corruption is one of the leading causes of encroachment on wetlands with majority of the encroacher bribing their occupancy into the wetlands.
” We discovered that there is massive encroachment on wetlands, we have also found out that people actually bribe their way to remain in those wetlands while others don’t even know that they are in wetlands”, said Peter Wandera the executive director of Transparency International Uganda.
Wandera explained that just like it is in other sectors, corruption has also greatly frustrated efforts against wetland encroachment. “We found that there is a lot of bribery, bribery is another form of corruption. There is bribery and also influence peddling as well as well as conflict of interest; people give money in form of cash or in kind so as to remain in the wetlands while others use their influence in form of political or economic influence so as to remain in the wetlands” Wandera noted.
The same study indicated that increasing urbanization and industrialization has also increased pressure on the remaining wetlands which are now becoming a source of construction materials such as sand, clay and others. In the two sample districts of Soroti and Kalungu it was discovered that sand mining constituted 27% of human activities in wetlands.
Anti- corruption agencies on their part highlighted funding limitations to deal with the current syndicated corruption in wetland management and protection. They say they lack advanced equipment, forensic teams and specialized staff such as engineers, valuers and quantity surveyors to curb the widespread wetland encroachment.
Steven Okiror who represented the Inspector General of government revealed that the country loses up to 2 trillion shillings every year in environmental degradation calling for concerted efforts from all stakeholders to fight the vice.
Recommendations.
Transparency international recommends a number of strategies aimed at combating wetland encroachment and climate change as a whole, notable among them is;
Improving transparency and accountability standards where by government must play a critical role of implementing robust regulatory frameworks, enforcing professional standards and ensuring adherence to the code of conduct.
Enhance inter-agency coordination of all environmental institutions, expand climate information and early warning systems, demarcate and sensitize communities on wetland preservation among others.
