By Kabuye Ronald
Environment activists under the My Tree Initiative (MTI) have made demands to the Ugandan government to avail land for massive tree planting as one way of responding to the prevailing threat of climate change that has adversely impacted the country’s agricultural, tourism and fisheries sectors.
Dr. Maggie Kigozi the chairperson Board of Trustees for My Tree Initiative observed that the government’s forestry body, National Forestry Authority (NFA) has a lot of land for tree planting but has no capacity to fully plant trees on it.
Dr. Kigozi who was speaking during the Chief Financing Officers (CFOs) breakfast meeting at Golf Club in Kampala on Wednesday noted that it was high time that the government ensured availability of land to private sector, since it cannot achieve it alone.
The CFOs meeting aimed at rallying the global financiers of the economy across the banking sector to ensure sustainable financing towards environment activism by MTI and its partners. Notable among the attendees was the International Monetary Fund (IMF) country representative Izabella Karpowicz, Richard Byarugaba from the Central Bank, Ronald Makata- Stanbic Bank, Terry Owach- Golf Club, Dorothy Mutabazi-ACCA, Dr. Maggie Kigozi and the MTI team led by Ashraf Enjer Ddamba.
My Tree Initiative has established partnerships around environmental activism with many strategic organizations including the Uganda Journalists Association (UJA) under which they run a campaign of planting 1 million trees across the country by the end of 2025.
IMF Boss Tips Ugandan Government on How to Mitigate Climate Change.
Speaking during the same meeting, the IMF country representative Isabella Karpowicz noted that Investment in green infrastructure is very critical before stressing the need for capacity building in the area of climate change. It is your responsibility to preserve green spaces”.
Karpowicz stressed the need by the Ugandan government to enhance financing around the area of climate change since a lot of investment was needed to reverse the current trends. “Spending on climate is very high in this area by the government, it has to correspond by the COVID 19”.
The IMF boss to Uganda hailed the massive tree planting efforts by MTI, pledging to commit all the requisite support to them.
The MTI director Ashraf Enjer Ddamba observed that the viable environment activism thrives around the sustainable financing that should be embraced by the Global Sustainable Chief Financing players.
“if the Chief Finance Officers can ensure the financing of the tree planting campaign, it will be sustainable” Ddamba told the stake holder’s meeting.
Ddamba emphasized that if their tree planting campaigns are embraced by all stake holders, it will redeem the protected areas such as wetlands from encroachment pressures.
Golf Club’s captain Terry Owach revealed during the same meeting that they would carry out a biodiversity audit to identify extinct species in their facilities to protect green spaces.
The event was crowned by planting a tree in the Golf Course playing field at Kampala Golf Club as a norm by the MTI teams.
