Word Wide Fund for Nature in Uganda in collaboration with Bunyoro Kingdom has flagged off a campaign that will see both institutions support the establishment of woodlots in schools across the Albertine Region.
The campaign was announced during the commemoration of the 2024 Earth Hour held in Kagadi District. Founded by the World-Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and its partners in 2007, Earth Hour is now observed in more than 180 countries across the globe.
Every year, millions of people observe the event by switching off their electric lights for a single hour.
Earth Hour aims to create awareness and spark global conversation on protecting nature and tackling the climate crisis Andrew Kirungi Byakutaga Ateenyi, the Prime Minister of Bunyoro Kingdom while presiding over the commemorations said the kingdom will work with its network of County Chiefs to bolster conservation efforts in schools.
“The Kingdom has been at the forefront of promoting environment conservation, imploring all the citizens of Bunyoro Kingdom to consider environmental conservation’’ he said.
The Woodlots project seeks to create environmental awareness and stewardship among learners increase tree cover in schools and promote the use of energy-efficient technologies in schools.
97 schools within the Albertine Region have been selected as the initial cohort. Officials said the program will be extended to other schools across the country by providing shade, and firewood among fruits.
Agnette Winther, the Chief Operations Officer at World Wide Fund said that schools having their woodlots in the backyard would reduce encroachment on gazetted land.
''An average school in Uganda needs at least three trucks of firewood a week to meet the cooking energy needs. With over 22,500 primary schools and 2000 secondary schools alone, this puts our forest sector and the environment specifically under a big threat,” said Ms. Winther.
“WWF Uganda has decided this year to use the Earth Hour to shed light on the really big crisis of deforestation we currently face in Uganda, one of the reasons being cooking fuel for school. So we use this opportunity to focus on this problem with the schools in Uganda that are consuming lots of wood for firewood,” she explained.
“We want to do this year is to ask the schools to plant at least one acre of woodlots for them to be self-sustainable in terms of fuel for cooking, but also to keep the environment in the school nice and clean and cold, so we can avoid ending up in a situation like in South Sudan where they had to close the schools because it was so hot,” added Ms. Winther.
Ms Winther also urged Ugandan authorities to support technologies for clean cooking, especially in schools.
“We also want to encourage the government to support techniques for clean cooking, because that’s also a very big factor that can contribute to minimizing the deforestation related to to fuel goods in schools'' she noted.
