Africa-Press – Uganda. The Minister of State for Environment, Ms Beatrice Anywar Atim, has urged government to scatter refugees in various areas saying concentrating them in one place has led to environmental degradation.
Ms Anywar made the remarks while launching a new project dubbed ‘restoring and conserving degraded and fragile ecosystems for improved livelihoods among the refugees and host communities’ in Kampala yesterday.
Ms Anywar, who represented Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja, said Uganda has an open policy to refugees from other countries and UNHCR latest data, of August 31, shows that the country hosts 1.5 million of them.
“The daily needs [of refugees] have caused a lot of degradation because there is pressure to collect firewood to cook food everyday,” she said.
Ms Anywar added that this had resulted in the destruction of the forest cover around refugee settlements.
“We have started incorporating them [refugees] in the conservation process with [the help of] our partners. We want to engage them in tree planting and giving them alternative cheap fuel,” she said.
Ms Anywar said if the refugees are spread out, they can be engaged in a number of productive activities and restore the forest cover quickly.
Ms Anywar called on stakeholders to give priority to Kitgum District in the restoration project because it provides essential needs to refugees.
The European Union (EU) representative, Ms Caroline Adriaensen, said the project would ensure that refugees and host communities have access to alternative sources of cooking fuel and decrease the demand and utilisation of natural resources within and around refugee settlements.
“The project contributes directly to the implementation of government’s water and environment sector refugee response plan and seeks to achieve synergies and strengthen coordination with other actions and development partners,” she said.
Ms Adriaensen added that the project aims at improving access to sufficient, healthier, sustainable, and alternative sources of energy, increased capacity to construct and maintain the decreased dependence on energy for unsustainable and unregulated sources for households.
“The project will also enhance adoption of sustainable land management climate smart agriculture practices, agroforestry enterprises and woodlot establishment and good post-harvest handling,” she said.
The EU has injected more than Shs37.2b in the fight against the increasing environmental and ecosystem degradation in West Nile Sub-region especially in the refugee hosting districts.
The Save the Children country director, Ms Dragana Strinic, said: “This project aims to achieve construction and distribution of 44,000 improved cooking stoves for vulnerable households and increase community awareness through installation and demonstration at institutions.”
She added that through these programmes, the key staff partners and volunteers will be trained on child protection including sexual exploitation and child abuse through child safeguarding policies.
The four-year project will be implemented in five districts which include Kikuube, Kyegegwa, Kamwenge, Terego and Yumbe. Other partners include Government of Uganda, World Agroforestry, Uganda Biodiversity Fund, and Enabel.
