Uganda: Sugar Reserves Were Made for Man not Man for the Reserves

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The recent sugar price hike has born much unrest, numerous demonstrations and prevalent dissatisfaction with the government. His Excellency President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni responded with an attempt to once again push for his long held proposal of growing more sugarcane on the land currently occupied by Mabira forest reserve. He then provided a number of reasons to support this proposal. However, his proposal has once again sparked nation wide turbulence and discontent given that the government has an obligation to protect and maintain national forest reserves, an obligation which the president appears to be sidelining. Furthermore, Mabira Forest reserve is the largest tropical rain forest in East Africa and provides great ecological and economic benefit (in terms of tourism) to the country.

All Ugandans, lay men and politicians, both of the ruling party and the opposition agree that sugar prices need to be curbed. However, the president is alienated in his proposal to use Mabira land for sugarcane growth. In fact, never has the president received such great opposition on any proposal he as made as the kind he currently faces concerning the Mabira proposal. Nevertheless, the president does provide some substantial reasons for his proposal, reasons that cannot be simply ignored. Aside from the fact that this project would generate about 3500 jobs and contribute about UGX 11 billion to the treasury; other reasons include first and foremost the fact that the Mabira forest reserve land is the only piece of land owned by the government that is closest to the sugar factory. This would therefore ease the transportation costs of the harvested sugarcane to the factory, thereby lowering production costs, which in turn lowers the prices of...

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...cting the forest reserve. Also, because the project does not result in permanent damage of the land, whenever new methods to provide sugar are obtained in future, the land can be restored to the reserve and used to regrow the forest. This sugar problem has presented us with a case of the natural struggle that exists between the need to protect and preserve the environment as well as the need to satisfy human demand for resources, food, and agriculture. There should certainly be no single factor that ultimately takes precedence over the other. All these factors are to some extent equally important and whenever conflict develops between them, solutions that seek to harmonize these factors should be sought and implemented rather than choosing to either do nothing or acting rashly.

Works Cited

Rulekere, Gerald. The Politics of Sugar. UGPulse, 2011. Web. 11/29/11.

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