A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

244 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingAs documented by Timothy Byakola of the Ugandan NGO Climateand Development Initiatives, no one denies that the project has hadsome good effects. It is acknowledged by locals as having improvedregeneration on the boundaries of the park, particularly in areas thathad been badly encroached on by agriculture, and as having increasedstreamflow from the forest. In 2003, the UWA-FACE project waseven certified by SGS as a well-managed forest according to ForestStewardship Council (FSC) principles (for more on the FSC, see‘From The Netherlands to the Andes – A tale from Ecuador’ on page247 and ‘Brazil – Handouts for repression as usual’ on page 302).But according to local council officials, the project employs fewpeople, and even then only during the planting period. And theevictions have made many homeless and hungry. In 2002, for instance,300 families were evicted from disputed land by park rangersin Wanale, Mbale district. Complaining that they had lived on theland for 40 years, with some even holding government land titles,the families said that they were forced to seek refuge in neighbouringvillages where they now live in caves and mosques. Fires have tobe kept burning the whole night in the caves to protect against cold,and school-going children have had their studies disrupted. Dodgingarmed ranger patrols, children slip back to their families’ former gardensto steal what they regard as their own food. Local people havelodged a case seeking compensation for destroyed property and thereturn of their land with the Mbale district court.Hundreds of families have also been evicted in other locations, increasingsocial tensions. 40 In 2003, villagers disgruntled at UWA’smilitarised approach destroyed over 400 hectares of eucalyptus plantationsin one night. In February 2004, New Vision newspaper reportedthat police were holding 45 people ‘suspected of encroaching onMount Elgon national park and destroying 1,700 trees’ planted by theUWA-FACE Foundation project. 41 At a November 2004 communitymeeting held in Luwa trading center, Buwabwala sub-county, evictedlocals insisted that they would go back to the forest rather thanface starvation. The park warden, for his part, promised that anyonecaught in the forest would be shot.In fact, so tense has the atmosphere become that Members of Parliamentfrom eastern Uganda have appealed to the government to degazetteMt Elgon’s boundaries to ease the suffering.‘The boundaries weremade unilaterally,displacing over 10,000people. The wildlifepeople who operate thepark are very militarised,and have killed over 50people. People feel thatthe government favoursanimals more then thepeople.’David Wakikona, Memberof Parliament, Manjiya 42But maybe a little short-term pain was necessary in order to preserve the forestand its carbon.But what else gets destroyed in the process? It’s not just a matter of