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.
The government needs to intervene now and stop this practice before the wildlife in South Florida is driven into extinction. The soil of south Florida is not ideal for sugar production therefore this production should be relocated to other parts of the countries with soils that favour...
...in Forest and to protect the species who live there must take into account how deforestation occurs.
"Uganda - African Economic Outlook." African Economic Outlook - Measuring the Pulse of Africa. 06 Nov. 2011. Web. 12 Dec. 2011. .
Agriculture is an absolute necessity for human life on Earth to continue. There are too many people on the planet for existence as hunters and gatherers to work anymore. That said, it must be realized that concessions must be made to allow such food growth and production to occur. But this does not mean that another important element of life on Earth can be destroyed for it. Unfortunately, that is indeed what is occurring, at an alarming rate. The rainforests of the planet are dwindling as the land they belong on is used more and more for agriculture, all over the world. In the Amazon, ,the most commonly detrimental agricultural practice is the technique of land clearing known as Slash and Burn.
Two new laws have been passed stating that the removal of any natural resources from the rainforest, including trees and minerals, is permanently banned. Timber and mining companies may no longer operate in the rain forest. In addition, to decrease the poaching of animals and trees in the rainforest, a drastic increase in the penalties for poaching will be issued and the consequences are up to and including potential life in prison. Also a large increase in the funding of efforts to prevent poaching and capture poachers has been set in place. In retrospect to the new laws put into place, there will be pros and cons of the effect that the law has on the Ba’aka people, the logging and mining workers, the poachers of bushmeat and ivory, and congolese environmentalists.
The country of Uganda is a struggling nation and has adversities with their living conditions, economy, and politics. Uganda uses a republic form of government. It has a mixed legal system of English common law and customary law. The country has a plethora of natural resources “including fertile soils, regular rainfall, small deposits of copper, gold, and other minerals, and recently discovered oil” (“CIA World Factbook”).The country itself has the potential to become wealthy and more powerful, but before you can access and use these resources, you first need to improve the living conditions for the people of the country. In order to do this the country is currently attempting to stabilize the economy by undertaking an economic reform. However, “unreliable power, high energy costs, inadequate transportation infrastructure, and corruption inhibit economic development and investor confidence”(CIA World Factbook). Once again, many small things need to be changed and fixed before the achievement of the final goal of improving the economy is remotely possible. Overall the...
“In the time you can read this sentence, eight acres of tropical rain forest will have been bulldozed and burned out of existence” (Bloyd 49). However, this destruction has been neglected and overlooked for years. Many people do not understand the long-term consequences of losing the earth’s rain forests. The rain forests have provided people with many natural resources and medicines. The benefits that rain forests provide to people will be destroyed if the depletion continues to be disregarded.
Governments in these countries need to stop thinking of forests as a renewable resource. The rate at which they are harvesting these areas drives them beyond the boundaries of sustainability. The efforts required by reforestation may not initially be cost effective, but it will result in not only the survivability of the environment, but of the country’s economy. Widespread awareness of these ideas will help fight against the natural human tendency towards instant gratification and short-term goals. Different methods of logging can be utilized to allow the rainforests to survive and regrow naturally and at a sustainable
Deforestation is a widely used term, but one with different meanings. Disturbance deforestation refers to all man made disturbances that alter a forest, these are the most common. This argumentative essay discusses the positive and negative aspects of deforestation. In the first part of the essay the pro arguments of deforestation will be discussed. For example, the issue of Global population and how forests are being used, land use and the ways forests contribute, wood use, forest growth, destruction and the reasons for cutting down the trees. The second half of the essay will cover the issues that are harmful to the environment because of deforestation. Many environmental issues take place everyday; a big question that arises, is if the global economy will ever finds middle on the issue of forest thinning. If deforestation was used only in the most crucial of times, the world might become a better place.
There are multiple agricultural development projects taking place in Sri Lanka including the UNDP Sri Lanka Community Programme, the Agro-Economic Development Project, and government projects. The UNDP Sri Lanka Community Programme is a four-year project designed to improve the management of natural resources. They hope to support the people’s livelihood and help reduce poverty in agricultural areas. They plan to do this through the reduction of deforestation and forest degradation along with replantation of forests that will benefit 10,000 households directly. They see forests and the benefits they bring to be important to the people and agricultural community of Sri Lanka [6].
Many people do not understand the definition of restoration. Restoration of the forest is returning it to its most natural state. However, the forest is not a single use area; it houses some of the most important recourses on Earth. Furthermore, it generates revenue for more than one industry in the United States economy. There are two types of restoration, active and passive but, the focus of this paper is to describe some of the most common active restoration techniques and how it positively influences the environment and economy There are many ways and techniques of restoration some using heavy machinery and some using no equipment at all. To attain ecological sustainability biological diversity is a necessity (Service) One technique is called passive restoration; many times passive restoration can be easily confused with passive management or neglect (Vining). Passive restoration is the cessation of activities that are causing degradation or preventing recovery. The process of passive restoration the land naturally goes through its own restoration process.. With out diversity it is difficult to build defence against change or disturbance. The main focus however is on different goals and techniques for active restoration. One purpose of restoring the forest is to maintain a strong ecosystem so that it can accommodated short-term stress and adapt to long-term change (Brown). There are over thirty thousand miles of road that run through the Payette National Forest and the forest service only had funding to maintain four thousand miles of road (Crawford). Since many miles of road cannot be maintained, it is up to the Forest Service to determine which roads will be maintained. Some roads are put on what is called a rotation plan. T...
Apart from that, the uncontrolled of deforestation continues, the wildlife who live in the forest have lost their habitat. The wildlife found hardly can survive as there is no longer natural protection and the food chain is influenced as well. Subsequently, the preservation of forest bec...
Political greed, the greatest challenge to Africa’s democracy Uganda inclusive is political greed. Presidents in some African countries want to rule for life and extend the patronage to their family members. This greed has led to manipulation of parliaments, constitutions for example according to Uganda’s constitution of 1995; the president had only 3 terms of office. However when Uganda’s president term expired in 2005, he bribed members of parliament with 5millions Uganda shillings to scrap off presidential term limits without holding a referendum and it succeeded. This was a great blow to Uganda’s democracy and contempt of the
Like a fairy tale at the top of a railroad, Uganda is a land of pristine beauty and astonishing ecosystems. From tall volcanic peeks in the East and Western borders, to the wetlands of the Albert Nile River, and the densely growth of rainforests of the North; Uganda has a rich soil that combined with its geographical location of central Africa has the ability to have coffee that has become both a mainstay of the agricultural economy and a favorite of connoisseurs around the world. The languages of English and Swahili, combined with mixtures of cultural dialects that exist throughout the nation, the religions of traditional African belief structures and Christianity are the main two of the region. I have chosen this country due to its economic solidarity and independence from outside requirements being self-sufficient for goods for one of the longest periods of African history.
Allen, Julia C., and Douglas F. Barnes. "The Cause of Deforestation in Developing Countries." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 1985: 163-184. Print.