A Land Slide in Uganda: An Avoidable Eventuality at the Peak of Land Degradation

An Avoidable Eventuality and the Peak of Land Degradation

It’s “a great tragedy that should make the country re-think the practices that interfere with God’s natural engineering…God knew what he was doing when he said this is a mountain, a swamp, a flood plain, river, etc. Therefore, practices that go against God and nature are dangerous as has been demonstrated by this tragedy” H.E: Yoweri Museveni’s stressed at his tour of a landslide hit Bududa district in Eastern Uganda.

President Museveni visits the disaster area

Over 100 people are confirmed dead and close to 350 are unaccounted for in what could be the country’s worst natural disaster in the recent history, that covered three villages in Bududa District, on Monday 1st March 2010. A bout 100 pupils who took shelter in a shop located in the near by Namatesi were buried alive by the boulder and mud loaded landslide. Other people were buried in the health centers, the church and many in their homes. Little did they know that these were later to be their final points of disastrous death. It is simply a state where nature rumbles, but it is a feedback and a mix of both human action and inaction. The Uganda Wildlife Authority (quoted in The NewVision Uganda Tuesday, 2nd March, 2010) observes how the landslide begun from an encroached area of the National Park and later spread about 250 Meters in an equally degraded community land.

Rescue efforts with elementary tools
Environmental Protection in Uganda has long been seen as a discipline of “anti” development practitioners. In fact several forestry (NFA) staff members have either been murdered or maimed by angry encroachers in an attempt to physically defend their desires at the expense of environmental health. Besides, political interests have rather made practical implementation of environmental rules and policies unattainable. The country has been stripped of its forest cover and the once “pearl of Africa” is nothing but an ugly shadow of its beautiful past. Those with the love of nature have rather been kept in a prison where technical conservation knowledge is shelved or limited to those who care to learn – and who are actually very few.
Is this the common man’s mistake, the policy maker’s, r both? We need to revise our notes and establish the role of land managers in ensuring efficient spatial and land use planning that carefully take care of environmental concerns. Uganda has lost some its important citizens of different age groups as an unfortunate lesson towards the need for deliberate environmental management efforts. The cost in way to high in terms of irreplaceable human lives, irreversible environmental degradation, and economically straining cost of evacuation, resettlement and recovery program - Shs35 billion [$17 million] is being solicited by the government only for resettlment. This can be avoided but things may get worse before they get better.It is high time we re-invented the wheel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbcVbLdihmE&feature=player_embedded