By Ezaruku Draku Franklin
Environmentalists have asked parliament to allocate more funding to the National Environment Management Authority to manage the country’s environment. The move comes as NEMA struggles to meet its targets amidst meagre funding.
While the environment management authority needs up to more than Shs60 billion, currently it only has Shs13 billion, with more than 80 percent of the funds going to salaries and other consumables.
Dr Barirega Akankwasa, the Executive Director of NEMA while meeting the legislators on different committees during a symposium last week, said while there are a lot of expectations on the performance of the authority, the same has been deprived of resources.
“Yes it is true NEMA has been put on the spot as you can see. There is a lot of expectation in the management of NEMA because increasingly people are becoming aware that we must conserve our environment if we must develop sustainably,” he said.
“We are also increasingly getting nature related disasters which affect the way of life of the people, the quality of life of the people and also the economy. If you build school, build roads and it is washed away it means you are not progressing, you are actually moving backwards. So it is better to focus on environmental sustainability as fundamental pillar for sustainable development of the country,” he added.
Dr Akankwasa said currently, the country is grappling with the issues of degradation of the environment and the ecosystem including wetlands and forests. He said wetlands have been decimated from 15 percent to 8.8 percent.
“Our plan is to increase the wetlands from 8.9 percent to 12 percent and beyond. Forests have declined from 45 percent in 1900 to 12 percent. Our plan is to move the forest cover from 12 percent to at least 18 percent by 2030,” he said.
The big challenge
While the authority manages the environmental ecosystem across the country, it has limited staffing that is concentrated at the head office while the rest of the country where environmental degradation takes place at alarming rate is left unattended to.
Dr Akankwasa said the authority has limited capacity to enforce the laws because of lack of human resources to enforce these laws. He said this has been worsened by the meagre funding allocated to the authority even when they have cried to the ministry of finance for more allocations.
“We lack financial resources and equipment to enforce these laws. We need technical capability in terms of air quality equipment, in terms of noise standards measuring equipment, in terms of effluent discharge water quality management laboratories so that we can be able to enforce the standards,” he added.
He said while parliament created the environment protection force to carry out the enforcement, up to now the force has not been constituted, making their work difficult. He said daily they receive a lot of reports but can only respond to limited numbers because of operational challenges.
“We need a force that has investigations capability, prosecution, intelligence and other capabilities. This force will require vehicles, uniforms and other equipment so we need approximately Shs22 billion to start the initial process of establishment of this force,” he said.
“On daily basis, we receive over 100 reports of environmental noncompliance like wetland degradation, encroachment, noise pollution and so many others and every day we send inspectors to where we can, but because of limited numbers, we respond to those we can. However, we respond to all where we can,” he added.
Dr Akankwasa also said to kick out people who have encroached on the wetlands, government must provide substantial amounts of money to carry out the evictions.
“We require about Shs35.5 billion to evict those who are wrongfully in the wetlands, but the current budget of NEMA is now Shs13 billion. Shs10billion of this goes into salaries and statutory obligations like NSSF, gratuity and others and so practically you are looking at only Shs3billion to run the affairs of environment to cover the whole country which is not possible,” he said.
Poor staffing
“We have only 127 staff and yet we desire to have 1000 staff. We cannot expect miracles to happen, we must invest in environment management because it is not a choice. The cost of no doing so is much more expensive than investing in environment now. So we either invest in environment to pursue a sustainable development or we continue with the state of affairs as is of today and we shall not make any progress,” he said.
The Country Director for World Wide Fund for Nature, David Duli, backed the NEMA boss and said parliament has responsibility to ensure that NEMA is adequately funded to perform its mandate. He said Uganda has all the relevant laws to ensure that the environment is protected, but there issues of implementation of the laws and policies. He said without adequate funding to NEMA and other bodies responsible for protection of the environment, the good set of laws will always remain on papers with limited impacts.
“We have all the relevant laws and policies in place, but despite that why do we have all the plastics around us? Why do we still have people who go to degrade wetlands?
“Good policies can be there but as long as you don’t have money to finance them, they will remain there in books. How much are you giving NEMA to implement these very good laws? We have heard how much it costs to rebuild the environment that has been destroyed, the figures are not small. Why are you not giving them the money to implement? 550 members of parliament in there and you think they don’t see? So why are you closing your eyes on climate financing?” he questioned.
Duli also pointed out to lack of consultations while formulating the laws, leaving many interest groups out. He said legislators must get on the ground and consult people who are likely to be affected by the negative impacts of environmental degradation and hear their voices.
“One of the things we need to talk about is while formulating these very good polices, what has been your level of engagement with different stakeholders. You know this environment reacts to us in different ways, those that have been affected differently, do they have their inputs there? Did you consult them?” he wondered.
Legislators however promised to look into the issues and address them. They asked NEMA and other environmental bodies to prepare and table their required budgets to the parliament and will support them.
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