Uganda sliding freely to climatic tragedy

In rising seal levels and expanding deserts in ravaged rain forest like Mabira and mushrooming slums Uganda, just like the rest of the world, is already experiencing human and environmental degradation with catastrophic ramifications.

It’s only two weeks ago that most low lying areas in and around Kampala city were flooded to un-precendended levels that left at least three people dead. And the situation can only get worse.

The Fourth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that the impacts of human-induced climate change are likely to be felt in poor countries and poor communities like Uganda first. Uganda has already been listed among the 100 most vulnerable countries whose over a billion people face a bleak future.

And the IPCC is emphatic in its assessment; stressing that human-induced climate change is likely to have the heaviest impact on small low-lying Island and coastal states, African nations, and Asian mega-deltas. Ironically, the 100 most vulnerable countries have contributed the least to total global carbon emissions with the United States of America, European Union, China and India being the major world polluters.

With well over a billion people in 100 countries faced with a volatile future, the IPCC has warned that this worrying situation, coupled with entrenched poverty, degraded or threatened environments will lead to more frequent natural disasters that could tip the poor nations like Uganda over the edge into chronic famine or forced migration. The greatest impact of climate change is already being felt on one of the world’s poorest continents - Africa, with unpredictable and unusually harsh weather conditions being felt in most countries including Uganda this year alone.

In Uganda , we don’t need to look else where to understand the causes of the erratic climate changes. Our forests are under severe attack by some of the most imprudent policies and decisions of our national leaders to destroy the forest cover in support of industrialisation.