| PHOTO: | Children fetching water from a stream. The State minister for environment says Uganda lacks enough water for domestic, agricultural and industrial use to spur the country into a middle income status. File photo |
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By:
Paul Tajuba
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| Posted:
Oct,25-2016 19:06:00
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KAMPALA
Uganda lacks enough water for domestic, agricultural and industrial use to spur the country into a middle income status, State minister for Environment, Dr Mary Goretti Kitutu has said.
Dr Kitutu, an environmentalist formerly working with the National Environment Management Authority (Nema), said recent water quantity assessment by her ministry points to a 23 per cent coverage reduction, mainly due to wetland degradation and deforestation.
Consequently, the government dream of attaining a middle income status by 2020 which will require water supply for the proposed 23 new industrial parks, commercialised agriculture through irrigation, urbanisation among others will be in jeopardy, should wetlands and forests continue to disappear.
"We require 55billion cubic meters (for middle income status) but if we left things as they are, we will have 37billion cubic meters (by 2020)," Ms Gitutu, said at the GIZ International Water Stewardship Programme (IWaSP) in Kampala on Monday.
"40 per cent of our (Uganda) rainfall comes from wetlands and forests and 60 from external influence...protection of wetlands and forests is therefore very important in this Hakuna Mchezo agenda," Dr Gitutu added.
IWaSP running under the theme, 'how to make water stewardship work for water security' is a programme being implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
It focuses on private sector engagement to combat common threats to water security and it is operational in other African countries like Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and South Africa among others.
But the government will have to navigate the low manpower of 60 environment protection officers shared by National Forestry Authority (NFA), the Wetlands management department and Nema to be felt on the ground.
Uganda has a wetland cover of 4,500 square kilometres (1.9 per cent of Uganda's total area), according to a 2015 report by Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) that feed into lakes and rivers, including Lake Victoria, George, Edward, Albert, and Kyoga, along with the River Nile.
Although the country has enormous water sources; there are international treaties that rationalise water for riparian countries such as the Cooperative Framework Agreement on River Nile.
The country has also 556 forest reserves but 493 are encroached on with the highest being the Sango Bay in western Uganda. Uganda loses 200,000 hectares of forest coverage annually due to among other factors agriculture, infrastructure development, industrialisation and urbanization, according to the UN Food and Agriculture latest report.
Ms Petra Kochendorfer the Charge d'affaires at the German embassy at the same function said Uganda, like other countries is increasingly facing water challenges due to pollution, poor management and infrastructure access and climate change that needs to be tackled urgently.
"Climate change has led these effects to become more severe and it is this changing climate that calls for collective and continuous effort by all those who face water security risks," Ms Kochendorfer, said.
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