3-year Project for One Million Trees to be Planted in Africa’s Mt Elgon Region Begun
A three-year project to increase forest cover and help local communities in eastern Uganda reverse the effects of deforestation has begun.
While the project is billed as one to help reverse the effects of climate change (A UK Department for International Development official said: “We very much hope this project will enable the people of Mbale region to provide the rest of the country with a vivid example of how to creatively mitigate against the effects of climate change in a way that also contributes to economic growth.), the actual reason may be more prosaic: deforestation.
Joseph Wesuya, an official of the African Development Initiative – a community organization in Manafwa district – said high population density in the Mt Elgon region had put a lot of pressure on the area’s eco-system. “Our environment is depleting at a fast rate; people are cutting down trees up the mountain, encroaching into wetlands,” he said. “The snow caps high on Mt Elgon are melting and you hardly see frost.”
This pattern mirrors what is happening on Mt Kilimanjaro due to deforestation.
The link between forests and rainfall and runoff have long been known. Forester and soil scientist, Walter Lowdermilk pointed to the link nearly a century ago. In 1923, he and engineer O.J. Todd made a two-thousand-mile survey up into the province of Shaanxi to find why the Yellow River caused trouble. Experts of the day pointed to catastrophic climate change. He found “the country was cut with enormous gullies…I measured one up to six hundred feet deep.” Yet in the midst of this devastation he found island of green. He found “[Buddhist] temple forests which priests had preserved for places of meditation, and managed for growing timber for repairs…there was no erosion of soil within them, that the ground was covered with forest litter and the trees were reproducing themselves naturally, in response to the climate and rainfall of the day.” Here was a clue that clearing of vegetation affected climate. He set out experiments. He conclusion were that “erosion alone was sufficient to account for the decline of a civilization and that we didn’t need to rely on a theory of change of climate.”
Nullius in Verba 