Kampala, Uganda. With 1.5million refugees, Uganda is the top refugee-hosting country on the African continent and one of the top five hosting countries in the world. Although the country has a relaxed policy which allows refugees to live outside camps, the country also has 48 refugee settlements, most of which are in areas experiencing the worst forms of environmental degradation.
Based on this, a section of environmental protection agencies, ministries and the non-governmental organisations have always said the influx of refugees in the country is a key contributor to the environmental degradation.
The National Environment Management Authority (NEMA in its latest State of the Environment Report for 2018-2019 states that soil and water have been polluted in refugee occupied areas and neighbouring natural resources such as Bugoma Central Forest Reserve and others face depletion.
But it offers limited statistical information to support the assertion. This is because, unlike in other countries, refugees in settlement areas share resources like wood fuel, land, water, health and education services with the host communities.
To assess to impact of settlements on the environment, The Independent carried out a month long investigation in the refugee occupied areas of Bidi Bidi in Yumbe District, Nakivale and Oruchinga in Isingiro District, Kyangwali in Kikuube District and Rwamwanja in Kamwenge District among others.
The objective was to eliminate misconceptions and also probably help to come up with proper measures to conserve the environment amidst refugee influx.
Business blamed
In Yumbe District, which hosts about 240,000 South Sudan refugees at Bidi Bidi Settlement Refugee Camp in five zones covering the sub counties of Romogi, Kululu, Odravu, Ariwa and Kochi, areas that were once covered with trees and tall grass are now huge empty spaces dotted with young trees. Sand mining and stone quarrying are rife. Most of this is, without evidence, blamed on refugees.
But a forest extension worker told The Independent that environmental degradation was happening even before the arrival of refugees in 2016.
Habib Edema Hussein said locals were already using the available natural resources for cultivation, charcoal production, timber, firewood in the area even before the influx of refugees.
“When you look at the individual homes and the settlements, people are using firewood and charcoal as source of fuel. It is only that the rate of degradation increased because of the increase in population in addition to influx of refugees,” he said.
“We (also) have prominent business people who deal in logs of endangered tree species like Afzelia Africana and Mahagony despite the local council’s ban. Business men collaborate with landlords to cut those trees and since it’s an illegal deal, such people don’t come to our offices for clearance as claimed by some people.”
Muhammad Anule, an elder residing near Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement Camp told The Independent that before population increase in the district and refugees’ influx, the impact of the destruction was not much felt because of the low population.
“Now the claim that refugees are behind the massive destruction of the environment is because their arrival led to an increase in population exerting pressure on the environment,” he said.
Patrick Aleko, a refugee who is now trading in tree seedlings at Bidi Bidi settlement said the problem has been caused by both nationals and refugees.
“We have the host community that is living with us and so the pressure on the environment has been a combined one,” he said. He said refugees and nationals compete for wood fuels for cooking, logs and construction materials such as grass.
“However, we have to make sure that the environment in which we live is conducive and we should ensure that the depleted environment is replaced,” he said as he tended his tree seedlings.
Rashul Mawa Ijoga, LC III Chairperson for Barakala Town Council that hosts Bidibidi Zone One settlement added that business men who deal in timber and logs are the biggest threat to environmental degradation in the country’s northern region.
He said traders target the old and endangered tree species that have stayed for over 100 years in disregard to their contribution to the environment.
“The refugees can’t be blamed for the destruction of the environment leaving out the host community. The community assumes that the land where the refugees are settled belongs to them and most often go into the settlements to cut the big trees like Afzelia Africana and Mahagony,” he said.
“The local community are the ones behind the logs and timber business. No one outside the refugee hosting areas can locate places with endangered tree species but it is the village local councils and the local community exposing such tree species to businessmen,” he added.
According to The Independent’s investigations, the same scenario is replicated in other areas around Nakivale and Oruchinga Settlements Camps, Kyangwali Settlement Camp, Kyaka II Settlement and Rwamajja Settlement Camps and others. Only in Kiryandongo District is different. Here the vegetation destruction happened in preparation for arrival of refugees from 2013 to 2017.
In the Nakivale Refugee Settlement Camp located in south western part of the country and hosting about 145, 200 refugees from Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Eritrea, the Lake Nakivale Wetland was well protected before 1994 and the main human activities that used to take place were cattle keeping, fishing and harvesting of wetland materials for domestic use. Today, the settlement on the edge of the wetland faces poor human waste disposal and water quality degradation.
Some of this is documented in a study published in the African Journal of Environmental Science and Technology in 2013 dubbed ‘The cost of poor land use practices in Lake Nakivale Wetland in Isingiro District, Uganda.’
But according to Shallon Busingye, the chairperson at the Nakivale Lake Community restoration sub-project, most of the degradation has not been caused by refugees but by nationals who encroached on the government land meant for refugee settlement.
She says this happened over time because of shift in land use practices by the locals from cattle keeping to crop farming.
Busingye says, over time, locals have taken to large-scale cultivation of maize for commercial purposes. As result the wetland was encroached-on to create more areas for food production, human settlement and urbanisation.
The remaining livestock has also degraded the shallow parts of the wetland, flood plain and steep slopes of hills around Lake Nakivale Wetland, leading to soil erosion and subsequently, siltation of water bodies in the area.
In Kyaka II settlement camp which hosts more than 125,000 refugees; majority from Democratic Republic of Congo, there has been increase loss of tree cover.