By Professor Oweyegha-Afunaduula
The Uganda heatwave: The tragedy of the shift from God-Nature-made climate change to Man-made climate change!
Blame the deep-sea of environmental ignorance, environmental poverty, environmental corruption, environmental bankruptcy and environmental injustice embedded in the brains of our decision-makers, increasingly detectable in their environmentally-unconscious and environmentally empty policies for economic development, trade, business, energy, industry, agriculture, transport and forestry.
All this is the price of rising techno arrogance, selfishness, greed, environmental ignorance, environmental injustice, environmental Bankruptcy, environmental corruption and environmental poverty in governance.
The moment our governors grasp that they are the problem because of their skewed mindset towards environment, then we shall have justice in the allocation of funds in the national budget, with less and less funds committed to wastage through consumption.
It is the case when more and more money is allocated to political institutions such as State House, Presidency, Executive and Parliament; or even to security more to protect power than to protect Ugandans and their country; more and more funds are committed to environmentally-dependent or unsuitable projects and programmes, which collapse, and must collapse, when the environment continues to collapse, as less and less money is committed to environmental conservation and management, and the communities are squeezed out of these activities in favor of more and more exploitation by investors, preferably from foreign environments abroad, with no ecological-cultural connections to our environment.
On the whole the official strategy towards the environment is “Let Nature Take Its Course”. Although institutions have been erected to help preserve and conserve our environment – institutions such NEMA and UWA – they are starved of necessary funds to undertake meaningful and effective strides in environmental and wildlife preservation and conservation. The little they get -and it is really little – ends up being consumed in salaries and administration.
One thing remains true: since our economy is more environmentally based than foreign-aid based, the more it collapses, the more everything dependent on it collapses.
Any investment in any venture to be carried out in a collapsing environment is destined to fail.
There is, therefore, need to take environment more seriously than we take politics, security, State House, etc. Their stability and sustainability can only be assured in stable, secure and sustainable environment.
A National Budget that is ignorant of this fact will be a national budget for wastage, because of its environmental deficiency. Such budget will be responsible for Man-made Climate Change on a continuous basis. It reflects environmentally empty budget planning.
It is unlikely it will be managed is such a way that environment supports development, yet it must because our development depends on the environment. Development must not be apart from the environment but integral to it. National Budget that disintegrated environment and development is a dangerous pollutant of the environment. I have told you. Take it or leave it and prepare for term dire consequences of being rejected by the environment.
For GOD AND MY COUNTRY
The Writer is a Uganda Scientist and Environmentalist
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