Increased heating around the globe has both directly and indirectly been influenced by human activities. And, as the population grows, land and its associated resources get encroached upon and degraded.
Internal and foreign immigrants would want them, for the purposes of settlement, for refugee or asylum, to cultivate food, to rare animals, for mining and construction activities or industrialization.
There is dire lack of public concern amidst the prevailing climate change, as people are ignorant or just irresponsible in the face of the problems associated with it. Instead, greedily cut down trees without replacement. Other resources like marine life are not exceptional. Everyday, huge vehicles ferry fish for export. But, now, the situation is threatening, yet seemingly no formula of rapid regeneration.
In some forest reserves areas like Bunya forest reserve, encroachers even put up serious fights against forest officials -trying to replant trees. It is surprising that even the newly planted trees are uprooted! They hardly posses the sense that the future of their children would be in jeopardy, when places turns out to be virtually inhabitable.
And, of course, the limited and habitable areas would be scrambled for by the wealthy people, who too make big numbers now days. What, then, would befall the majority poor? But, interestingly, they are most aggressive towards the environment.
But, on January 16th 2009, the daily monitor reported a case -in which tree cutters killed two forest officials. The incidence was not new at all. Several clashes had been reported in Mayuge district, alone.
But cries for military reinforcements have continuously hit deaf ears. Environment crimes -leading to murders, could be some form of robbery, which must be handled with same iron fist as other robbery incidents.
Besides, heat-stress could have serious effects on any organism -including humans. For example, on a good hot day, the heat could break the skin, lead; to exhaustion and total discomfort, to dehydration, shortage of fresh air, dizziness and even death.
One would feel like not wearing any cloth due to the great discomfort. And the fashion-minded ones, on the other hand, could feel “betrayed” by climate change for being forced into lighter clothes -especially if he or she favors suits.
For animals, tourism would be affected greatly, as intolerable ones migrate to other habitable environments. For instance, Bunya forest reserve, which were once a home of hippopotamuses, are instead occupied by aggressive farmers.
Diet-wise, there would be scarcity of food, and sellers soon react by increasing prices -to discouraging rates, yet the majority of people are too poor to afford a decent meal daily. Surprisingly, also, prices of food in rural areas have tended to be as similar as those in urban places. The poor man or woman, now, faces same-level costs of living as the financially better-off ones, but strangely survive.
Farmers, well, could celebrate increased crop prices in such a situation. But the story, altogether, could be different for the land-less and poor. Nonetheless, farmers, too, suffer from unsupportive economy. They are exploited by huge capital businessmen, who unfavorably determine poor farmers' crop prices.
Some occupations like brick making, construction and mining greatly erode and destroy the natural landscape or topography, water reservoirs and soil arrangement. Policies would allow these people to work in such fields over certain period of time and, then ask them to choose another income generating activity.
Otherwise, with increasing land fragmentation, they would have no other place to destroy after filling their home compounds with deep pits -to no more compound or environmental beauty; who would allow them make bricks shift onto somebody else's land?
Conditions, alone could surely dictate the life of such an occupation. However, to avoid confusion and helplessness on the part brick-makers in a long run, local leaders would need to come out and warn their people.
Reclaiming land using building debris and materials from demolished buildings -would be ideal community requirement or regulation to enforce. The debris would be placed back into pits in attempt to rearrange soil or level the ground.
Not many people have the idea of utilizing vacant private land for tree planting -both as a contribution to mother nature and income generation. Government and cultural institutions too would do the same to its own land as lead example for their community members to follow.
But, where there is communal ownership of resources community members tend to be irresponsible and only be up for grabs and exploit them -mindless of the impact on the environment or climate alteration. And, perhaps, with most economic sectors being liberalized government could be more lazy to carry out any initiative in the interest of the nation.
What is only heard is greed or self-seeking. Daily Monitor, in a report by Chris Obore on January 25th 2009 revealed that board members to National Forest Authority as part of the problem hindering efforts to avert global warming -through their actions of illegally ferrying timber from national forest reserves. A similar source, also, disclosed that forestry official too were part of the the problem -by way of facilitating illegally ferrying of timber.
Government, at best only privatizes such land -sometimes blindly to investors, who are environmentally insensitive. For them, so long as their privatization libido is gratified and commissions shared with its business agents, the rest to do with environmental degradation would hardly be a concern.
Perhaps, with president Museveni's new stance on corruption, both citizen institutional responsibility could be nurtured. Because of diminished trust for institutional roles towards environmental protection, centralization of monitoring now goes to the venter.
Meanwhile that would be fine in a shorter term, but not be sustainable in a longer term. Individual citizens and institutions need to take keen interest in global events like climate change or corruption, and immediately consider to stop them.
They, for example, could be now motivated to move out in search for seedlings to plant, and proudly cover their undeveloped land with trees as real development ideal or side-by-side with other developments.
A vigorous programme should be erected with efforts geared towards empowering individuals sot that in turn they construct sense into the community at large. The community members, too, through their leaders could come out to do a community tree planting day or week -featuring tree planting activity, environment advocacy and campaigns -about the importance of trees, training of community leaders undertaken by experts, and active media engagement -through continued citizen enlightenment.
In addition, funding should be sought as well as availed to prospective tree farmers. It would be equally excellent if seedlings were offered at no cost -as government contribution to sustainable development.
Research grants, too, ought to be sought and made available to develop appropriate technologies intended to reduce carbon emission, save energy and projects that promote production and use of renewable energy technologies as well as low cost and energy-efficient products.
The work of Ntambi Steven and his colleague should be an eye-opener of how far Uganda could go if it invested in research. Which country would not associate itself with such technological advancement from its own citizens as Ntambi and company?
As this is done, legislation be passed to protect the environment or regulating its exploitation -where any law broken would be as biting as breaking other serious laws at the level of robbery. And adequate security ought to be deployed against encroachers.
Having made militarization of everything the order, and seemingly most effective tool, the natural resources management departments, too, could benefit. And, side-by-side with fighting encroachers, corruption, which cuts across all sectors, perhaps, even in families, must be checked as noted therein.
Understandably, different parties might encourage it -that maybe; forestry officials themselves, the deployed military force and unlicensed tree cutter. However, with emphasis on individualized responsibility, as enshrined in the educational curriculum, training manuals, policy papers and statements, laws and different public speaking fora - towards averting global warming, strongest possible positive attitudes would be developed at that level, then contagiously spread in larger unit as families, national institutions and community or international policy platforms.
Large systems as governments, local and international bodies could only excellent sources of continued reinforcement to better attitudes and behaviors towards the environment. Doing so could help to spontaneously create a more concrete and long-term healthy attitudes and behaviors necessary to avert global warming.
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