Nwoya District has lost an estimated 15,000 hectares of natural forest cover between 2011 and 2025, a scale of deforestation that officials say is now driving the prolonged droughts, failed harvests and food insecurity threatening communities in the area.
Nwoya District Forestry Officer, Mr Emmanuel Omara, said the area had approximately 59,000 hectares of natural forest cover before 2010. “In many areas, forests have been replaced by bare ground and grasslands,” he said on Wednesday.
Mr Omara has blamed the shrinking forest cover for this year’s drought, the longest the district has experienced in years. “Crops have dried up, creating a serious risk of hunger among our people,” Omara stated.
Farmers who planted early, when rains came in February, managed to harvest. Those who waited until March or April, as in previous years, were not so fortunate. Maize and groundnut yields in the first season were poor, and a second-season recovery has largely failed to materialise.
Ms Evelyn Acan, a Senior Environment Officer at Nwoya District Local Government, said the deforestation driving this crisis stems from several sources, including commercial farmers clearing large tracts of land, charcoal dealers stripping forests for fuel, and encroachment on wetlands that also help regulate the local climate.
“Some people are cultivating deep inside wetlands without respecting the required buffer zones,” she said, adding that herbicides and pesticides used there are draining into water systems.
The district officials say they are responding to the forest loss, though resources remain limited.
Nwoya’s Department of Natural Resources has installed energy-saving cookstoves at Anaka, Koch Goma Secondary School and Purongo Hill Secondary School to ease pressure on remaining forests, and demarcated four kilometres of sensitive ecosystems.
Bamboo has been planted along catchments to curb soil erosion into rivers.
In a move to address this, ActionAid International Uganda has been engaging communities in Nwoya and Amuru districts as part of the Global Week of Climate Action, a worldwide campaign localised to reach grassroots communities in Northern Uganda, and to help reverse the trends behind the district’s forest loss.
Mr Robert Asiimwe, ActionAid’s Programme Officer for the Northern Uganda Region, said the campaign gives people who have contributed least to the climate crisis, yet bear its heaviest consequences, a platform to be heard.