| Overview : The cattle corridor of Uganda has experienced dramatic land and vegetation degradation driven by a combination of inappropriate land use (agricultural encroachment into reserves) and the weakening of pastoralism as a production system. These are in turn driven by high population growth, high dependence on natural resources coupled with poor resource management, and poor economic development, poverty and more recently climate change. Pastoralism, charcoal production and trade as well as declining crop farming constitute the main economic activities in the corridor. The Government of Uganda through the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) with support from United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) is implementing the project "Enabling environment for sustainable land management (SLM) to overcome land degradation in some of Uganda’s Cattle Corridor Districts, namely Kamuli and Nakasongola. The overall goal of the project is Sustainable Land Management providing the basis for economic development, food security and sustainable livelihoods while restoring the ecological integrity of the Cattle Corridor ecosystem. The objective of the project is to provide land users and managers with the enabling policy, institutional and capacity environment for effective adoption of SLM within the complexity of the cattle corridor production system. This objective will be achieved through strengthening the policy, regulatory and institutional frameworks to support sustainable land and charcoal management in the cattle corridor, use of Knowledge as a basis for land use planning and improvement of dryland farming and pastoralism, and, facilitation of Local economic development through diversification and access to finance and insurance. The charcoal value chain is characterized by poor and inefficient practices that result in substantial losses of the raw material (wood) as well as the product (charcoal). This in turn increases pressure on the declining woody biomass stocks in the cattle corridor which is also the main supply source of charcoal in Uganda. The Renewable Energy Policy of Uganda of 2007 emphasizes the need to ensure sustainability of charcoal production and proper functioning of the charcoal sub-sector by introducing a number of interventions including the development of charcoal standards and promotion of efficient kiln technologies. These interventions are recognized as key milestones in creating a formal and fairly modernized charcoal industry in the country away from a largely informal and disorganized one. During the course of implementation of this project, 20 casamance kilns [30% increased efficiency of charcoal production] were provided to farmers that were willing to pilot the use of this technology to generate lessons and encourage adoption. With the same amount of wood, the yield of charcoal from traditional kilns is about 10 bags [each weighing about 70 kg], whereas the yield of charcoal from casamance kiln is 13 bags [30% increase- 210 kg additional charcoal. At midterm, the performance of the technology was reviewed with the users, which discovered that the transportation of the bulky casamance kiln to the charcoal making site is by itself a big problem, since it can be moved only on pick-up or ox-carts, which are limited in number in the area. The mission then designed a portable casamance kiln, that can be dismantled and re-assembled, which is made of tin and can be transported on a bicycle. The consultants recommended that modified casamance kilns made for dissemination to the CBOs for piloting. The modified casamance kiln [drawing prepared by the mission- see Figures 6 & 7], costs about US $ 250. |
