By Chris Kayonga

An NTV investigation has illuminated the damage wrought by the encroachment of Kampala’s greenbelt in the last decades. From the Centenary Park green spaces to the Kinawataka green wetlands, areas that store and absorb the water flow by trapping and slowly releasing surface water, rain, and floodwaters have shrunk considerably.

A satellite image produced by Annika McGinnis at InfoNile captures the scale of the encroachment on the Lubigi wetland. Large-scale infrastructural projects like the Northern Bypass have aggravated matters.

Lubigi is hardly an outlier. Wetlands in Nakivubo and Kinawataka have been whittled down by encroachments occasioned by investors and human settlements. Today, Uganda continually pays a high price because of the encroachments. Flash floods continue to turn Kampala’s thoroughfares into death traps. With the drastic effects of climate change, it will take a number of years and large sums of money to fix the city’s potholes and red-rutted paths in the outskirts of Kampala metropolitan city.

A 2020 research paper, The Cost of Congestion in Kampala, Uganda by the International Growth Centre, shows that about $1.5 million (UGX 5.65 billion) is lost each day as a result of traffic congestion. This means that annually $547.5 million (UGX 2 trillion) is lost to traffic gridlocks in the capital.

Cost of destruction

The other direct cost linked to wetland destruction is in regard to road maintenance in the city, which is amongst the highest in the world. For instance, the World Bank recently funded Lukuli Road, whose 7.71-kilometre stretch across Makindye division cost UGX 70.5 billion. That’s an average cost of UGX 9.1 billion per kilometre.

Kulambiro Ring Road/Najjera Link and Nakawa Ntinda and Acacia Avenue construction measured 9.77 kilometres in length. It was built at a cost of UGX 90.4 billion, with each kilometre costing UGX 9.3 billion. 

Kabuusu-Bunamwaya-Lweza, an 8.06-kilometre road, cost UGX 93.7 billion or UGX 11.6 billion for each kilometre.

Further, the ecologically destructive development model adopted in the city comes at the expense of green spaces and vital ecosystems that serve as natural mechanisms of flood control, water filtration and drainage. This has health consequences for city dwellers, such as increased vulnerability to waterborne diseases, especially in slums where nearly 50 percent of Kampala residents reside.

Since Kampala is the economic hub of the country, it has come in the eye of the storm of rural-urban migration. Its population has swelled from 1.18 million people in 2000 to 5 million in 2020.

“About 67 percent of Uganda’s GDP is here in Kampala, and because most of the wealth is here, there has been a pull factor,” Dr Arthur Bainomugisha, executive director of the Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE), revealed, adding, “It has caused pressure for housing. [Since] people have no housing, [they] fill up the wetlands and build.”

Prioritising development

In keeping with the government’s commitment to a neo-liberal policy that prioritises development driven by private and largely foreign capital, land in the capital was acquired in a wetland to build Forest Mall. This followed similar developments such as Garden City, which encroaches on the Kitante Wetland; Kinawataka Wetland, giving way to a car bond near Kyambogo; and Crest Foam, reclaiming a swamp to aid its expansion.

“The Garden City area was […] supposed to be part of the urban environment protected area, but we are finishing it up by building shops and buildings,” said then Lubaga South lawmaker, John Ken Lukyamuzi, during a plenary session of the Sixth Parliament, adding, “The rains during El Nino could be controlled if we had rich vegetation in terms of afforestation.”

Bukoto Health Centre III serves communities from as far as Kiwatule and Kyanja. It has continued to grapple with flooding this rainy season. Previously, the health centre has lost drugs in the stores due to flooding.

“Even now when there is a heavy downpour, our health centre floods. It has flooded at least four times,” Ben Mwanje, the LC1 Chairman of Butukirwa, told NTV, adding that “the drugs in the store got damaged.”

Victor Nahabwe, senior manager of environment enforcement and field operations at the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), says “The biggest threat to wetlands is general wetland encroachment by mostly the rich.”

Despite a 1998 amendment to Section 44 of the Land Act, stipulating that the government or a local government shall not lease out or otherwise alienate any natural resource, including wetlands, land titles continue to be issued for property in wetlands. Per the Uganda Wetland Atlas Volume One, each year 600 hectares or 1483 acres of wetland are reclaimed in this manner.

Lip service

Since 1995, land titles have been issued for at least 782 plots wholly or partially located in wetlands in central Uganda, according to a 2018 audit of the Wetland Management Department by the Office of the Auditor General. The audit partly attributed this to poor coordination between the Wetland Management Department and districts regarding dissemination of information on wetland boundaries, interference and pressure from powerful politicians or high-ranking government officials; and possible corruption of officials from the Uganda Land Commission, District Land Boards and Area Land Committees.

“We rarely see those cases; they are very minimal because we have a professional team. So, any person intending to compromise the enforcement team then he himself is equally liable to being charged,” Nahabwe at NEMA noted.

His comments are in stark contrast to a recently released Inspectorate of Government report, which estimates that the loss of environmental resources to corruption is an astronomical UGX 2.28 trillion per year. The same report puts the cost of environmental pollution and degradation at UGX 536.8 billion per year.  

On April 16, 2014, a Cabinet paper recommended the cancellation of land titles in wetlands in a bid to address the problem of wetlands degradation. It also directed that all titles in wetlands on public land acquired unlawfully after 1995 be cancelled by the Lands Ministry. Enforcing these legal provisions has, however, proved to be complicated.

Discriminatory enforcement

Appearing before the Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE) in March 2023, KCCA’s Director of Health Services and Environment, Daniel Okello, revealed that “on the Nakivubo channel, the Cabinet sub-committee chaired by the Prime Minister assessed and recommended cancellation of titles. There was a list of titles to be cancelled. Along the way, some of the affected people went to Court and got injunctions.”

A March 2018 Memo from NEMA to Dorothy Kisaka, the KCCA executive director, listed plots with titles for cancellation located in the wetland section of Bugolobi Bungalows. The list excludes UBC land because it was acquired before 1995 and Plot 469 Mpanga Close, which is exempted on account of a Court Appeal ruling. Further, titles for plots in Kitintale Zone 12 and plots adjacent to Kampala Industrial Park are listed for cancellation.  

This raises the concern of discriminatory enforcement in light of the inconsistent application of the law. For instance, in 2014 a perimeter wall was erected by Royal Palms Suites at Butabika in Kinawataka wetland, compromising the long-term ecological integrity of the wetland which along with Nakivubo and Lubigi are the three most critical wetland ecosystems in the city.

This happened six years after farmers in Kinawataka wetland were prevented from opening the wetland for cultivation and digging drainage channels.

“As NEMA we don’t discriminate. We treat everyone equally. We don’t discriminate in enforcement. If you are encroaching on a wetland then the law has to take its course,” Nahabwe argues.

A tall order?

Interventions by government agencies and civil society to restore degraded wetlands indicate the scale of the challenge. The 2018 audit reveals that countrywide, 628.9 hectares or 1,554 acres are restored each year yet 28,261 hectares or 69,834.4 acres are lost each year. Typically, this net loss of wetlands is attributed to re-encroachment on restored wetlands.

“When you look at the Lubigi wetland from where it starts, that is I think Namungoona, around that area, it entirely falls on Kabaka’s mailo land title. That is the land title for Block 203. Meaning that a wetland, which is a public good, is located on land which is owned primarily by a certain individual,” Denis Bugaya, the Buganda Land Board spokesperson, said, adding, “So, how do you balance the individual right of the owner and the public good which is maintaining the environment?”

Public green spaces continue to be threatened by the prevailing unplanned city sprawl. These spaces are sites for community activities and recreational activities such as sports, which is critical given the city’s predominantly young population. Yet it is increasingly apparent that the value they contribute to making the city liveable is underestimated by the authorities and city planners, with an insatiable appetite to build on any open space.

The Uganda Vision 2040, a strategy to foster the development of Uganda, outlines the efforts necessary to restore ecosystems such as wetlands through the implementation of catchment-based systems, gazetting of vital wetlands for increased protection and monitoring and inspecting restored ecosystems.

However, it will take pragmatism rather than such lofty blueprints to save Kampala from being sunk by ravaging floods.

This story was originally aired on NTV, with data visualizations produced by InfoNile.