The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has unveiled a 15 million euro European Union funded project to bolster the sustainability of Uganda’s forestry sector and aid the country's green transition, FAO announced.
This initiative is all about unleashing the potential for Uganda’s forest resources to contribute more sustainably to inclusive economic growth, global efforts to address the climate crisis and loss of biodiversity and to promote women’s economic empowerment,” said FAO's Uganda representative Antonio Querido.
"We look forward to working with the EU, the Government of Uganda and our other partners to move this important project forward," he added."
Uganda’s forests are increasingly at risk from encroachment, deforestation, illegal timber logging and forest degradation. Almost one quarter of Uganda’s land was forest in 1990 but by 2017 that had nearly halved to only 13 percent, according to Rome-based FAO.
The five-year Sustainable Wood-Based Value Chains in Uganda initiative, to be implemented by FAO, aims to ensure the sustainable supply of legal wood raw material from planted forests, making processing facilities more efficient and boosting their capacity, to strengthen market demand for wood products and to make affordable finance more available, said an FAO statement on Wednesday.
The project seeks to increase the quality and value of planted forests which is crucial to incentivise the maintenance and expansion of forest assets while enhancing livelihoods, the statement underlined.
Another objective is to achieve economies of scale by aggregating more of the country’s smallholder tree farmers and wood processors as domestic and regional demand for wood products grows.
A sustainable forestry sector will help Uganda transition towards a carbon-neutral economy, FAO said.
Fighting the country's illegal timber trade is a key to attaining this goal as the scourge which loses the state major tax revenues and contributes to deforestation along with continued reliance on charcoal as fuel in many urban areas, the UN agency underscored.
Over the last 15 to 20 years, with support from the EU, FAO and other partners, substantial investment has been made in Uganda's forest sector, meaning that the amount of wood produced is expected to grow substantially in the coming years, the agency noted.
"The EU takes pride in its ongoing commitment to significantly investing in advancing Uganda's commercial forestry industry," said EU Ambassador to Uganda Jan Sadek.
"It is dedicated to fostering the growth of a robust and sustainable sector that thrives both environmentally and commercially," Sadek said.
