A 2019 resolution by Civil Society Organizations in Gulu to plant 1 million trees each year under the Gulu Go Green campaign has been hindered by several challenges.
In 2016, CSOs launched the Go Green drive to restore the degraded forest in the district.
However, Bernard Loum, the coordinator of CSOs working towards restoring the depleted forest cover in northern Uganda, said although they started effecting the resolution in 2020, they didn’t meet the one million target because of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent cuts in donor funding which also halted planting in the past three years.
The aim of the campaign was also to distribute at least 5,000 tree seedlings to 20 primary schools in the district.
However, Loum said because the trees were planted during the second season, only about 60 percent of the trees have survived because many were affected by drought, wildfire, and termites, while others were uprooted and replanted by the community.
Although the CSOs planned to employ the use of ICT to create content and sensitize the community on the environment to promote the campaign, the model was affected by poor ICT infrastructure in schools. Some of the schools that were chosen to use the ICT are Layibi College, Negri College, and Graceland Girls.
Loum said although they got a few donations of computers, they had to keep moving with them to different schools because most of the schools have ill-equipped ICT infrastructure.
“We have seen MTN Uganda have a strong component under their foundation for ICT support to schools, so we will try and engage with such companies to realize this dream,” Loum said.
Loum said the CSOs have had advocacies in places to have bylaws in place to promote tree growing and reduce tree cutting, but its implementation has been affected by COVID-19 and financial challenges.
Loum said there are ongoing discussions to see how to strengthen tree growing while e, emphasizing the need for all CSO actors, religious institutions, and cultural leaders to pool resources and ideas together to reenergize and bring the resolution to life.
Franklin Okello, the Executive Director of Gulu NGO Forum, said their plan is also to popularize a strategy called Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration, which encourages the harvesting of mature tree branches for charcoal or firewood to give a chance for the stump to continue living, instead of felling the whole tree.
Acholi sub-region has been the epicenter of commercial charcoal and timber trade in the past decade, leading to a great decline in the forest cover.
Gulu District, which is one of the most affected districts lost 3 hectares of forest cover from 2001 to 2022 equivalent to a 1.4 percent decrease in tree cover since 2000, according to the Global Forest Watch.
The National Environment Management Authority in its 2008 State of the Environment Report notes Uganda continues to lose 92,000 hectares of forest cover annually and only plants 5000 hectares per year.
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