By Eudes Ssekyondwa
TRT Afrika, Kampala
Congo native Livingstone Matata arrived in Western Uganda in July to start a new life at the Nakivale refugee settlement, a massive sprawl of mostly white tents and tin roofs framed against the backdrop of a lake, hillocks and vast open fields some 200km away from the capital city of Kampala.
In the three months that he has been there, the biggest test of survival has been posed by erratic weather.
"We settled in during what is supposed to be the rainy season, but there's been scarcely any rainfall since. The locals say that rampant deforestation has disrupted rainfall patterns," Matata tells TRT Afrika. "My crops are withering already."
Bwiiza Mutonore, raising a child as a single mother, struggles to find firewood every day for cooking. Each day, the trudge to one of the last remaining patches of green foliage grows longer.
"There are no trees in the vicinity. I have to walk miles to get enough firewood, sometimes at the risk of being chased by owners of small woodlots...If you do not get firewood, you will likely sleep on an empty stomach," she rues.
Ironically, such a high dependency on wood as fuel for cooking is one of the reasons for Nakivale losing its tree cover at an alarming pace.
Highest refugee numbers
Africa hosts over 30% of the world's refugee population, with Uganda taking in more people than any other country in the continent.
According to the United Nations, as of September 2023, the East African country was home to 1,520,966 refugees and 47,271 asylum seekers.
People from South Sudan top the list, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hordes of people from Somalia, Burundi, Eritrea, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Sudan are also known to emigrate to Uganda every year, taking advantage of the nation's open-door refugee policy.
But while Uganda has received plaudits for welcoming refugees with open arms, what's happening in the 184 sq km Nakivale settlement reflects how it is becoming increasingly more challenging to cater for them with dwindling resources from humanitarian agencies.
Climate change exacerbated by deforestation has compounded the refugees' woes.
The World Food Programme (WFP) reduced rations from 70% to 60% from April 2020 and even lower from February 2021.
A measure of the resource crunch is that WFP could afford to spend only 0.35 cents a day on every person in 2022, almost half of the projected 0.68 cents it needed to spend.
This translated into a big nutritional gap, with the available resources being enough to meet only 52% of the minimum daily kilocalories required for a person's diet.
"In addition to the support that we give them, all the refugees at Nakivale depend largely on land for their livelihood," Santo Asiimwe, WFP's programme officer at the Nakivale refugee settlement, tells TRT Afrika.
"The weather has been so unusual that we are past October, and there has been practically no rain."
Progressive policy
Uganda gives refugees the right to work and freedom of movement through what it terms a "self-reliance model", which has been widely praised as one of the more progressive refugee policies in the world.
That is how refugees like Matata and Bwiiza can strive to compensate for dwindling humanitarian aid.
"Getting a patch of land to farm is very important to us; otherwise, we would be starving," says Matata. "The problem is that some of those who came before us have cut down far too many trees, either for firewood or to clear land for agriculture. The impact of that is biting us now."
Most refugees understand the repercussions of denuding the area's green cover but say they have little choice.
"My children tell me every day that this firewood we use is the cause of climate change — that it is contributing to us not having enough rainfall. But without firewood, how shall I cook?" asks Bwiiza. "We are already refugees with limited options for survival."
Green shoots
Enoch Twagirayesu, a Burundian, is mobilising fellow refugees in Nakivale to try and regenerate the once-verdant zone's lost green canopy.
The group has so far planted over 350,000 trees to tame the effects of climate change in the area.
"My dream is to make the Nakivale refugee settlement green again. We are sensitising refugees and the host communities to plant trees within their banana plantations," Twagirayesu tells TRT Afrika.
The task of taking everyone along is challenging, as Twagirayesu has found out already. Not everybody understands the importance of planting trees, while some couldn't care less because they have decided not to stay in the camps for long.
"It is tough to encourage people, especially the young, to adapt a culture of planting trees," he says. "Remember that many people are just thinking of survival."
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has contracted a local social enterprise called Nsamizi Institute for Social Development to reverse the effects of climate change in the area by growing more trees.
Between May 2022 and 2026, the project aims to revive almost extinct natural resources and provide refugees sustainable livelihoods. Refugees are currently paid to prepare and maintain the nursery.
"We plant trees depending on the target for the year. For 2023, we have targeted planting saplings across 80 hectares in Nakivale alone, and another 10 hectares in the Uruchinga settlement," says Racheal Akamumpa, energy officer at the Nsamizi Institute for Social Development.
The UN agency and its partners hope that over the next five years, they will not only cushion the impact of climate change in the area but also contribute to reducing Uganda's carbon footprint.
