KAMPALA – Ugandan authorities have urged to implement tax cuts on clean cooking technologies especially for schools to alleviate pressure on forests throughout the country.
The call was made by Ms. Agneta Winther, the Chief Operations Officer at WWF Uganda during the commemoration of Earth Hour Day marked in Kadagi District on Wednesday, March 20.
Winther said clean cooking technologies can decrease the use of wood fuel and charcoal by up to 50 percent.
“We want to encourage the government to support techniques for clean cooking because it is a very big factor that can contribute to minimizing the deforestation related to fuel woods in schools,” she said.
She said the subsidy needed to be implemented would the accessibility of clean cooking technologies by reducing system prices, particularly for the lowest income segments including schools in rural settings.
In a partnership with Bunyoro Kingdom and religious leaders, WWF Uganda has since asked schools within the Albertine Region to establish at least an acre of a woodlot for cooking requirements.
“An average school in Uganda needs at least three trucks of firewood a week to meet the cooking energy needs. With over 22,500 primary schools and 2000 secondary schools alone, this puts our forest sector and the environment specifically under a big threat,” said Ms. Winther.
“WWF Uganda has decided this year to use the Earth Hour to shed light on the really big crisis of deforestation we currently face in Uganda, one of the reasons being cooking fuel for school. So we use this opportunity to focus on this problem with the schools in Uganda that are consuming lots of wood for firewood,” she explained.
“We want to do this year is to ask the schools to plant at least one acre of woodlots for them to be self-sustainable in terms of fuel for cooking, but also to keep the environment in the school nice and clean and cold, so we can avoid ending up in a situation like in South Sudan where they had to close the schools because it was so hot,” added Ms. Winther.
Officials caution that without adopting clean cooking technologies, the progress made could be undermined. Charcoal production and firewood consumption lead to the felling of approximately 7000 hectares of forest every 30 days.
“An average school in Uganda needs at least three trucks of firewood a week to meet the cooking energy needs. With over 22,500 primary schools and 2000 secondary schools alone, this puts our forest sector and the environment specifically under a big threat,” said Agneta.
To mitigate these issues, the focus includes mobilizing sustainable financing, promoting biomass replacement, supporting green charcoal producers, distributing improved cookstoves, and continuous awareness campaigns to encourage the adoption of clean cooking energy sources.
Despite advancements in some districts, the reliance on wood fuel and charcoal remains high. Statistics reveal that 100,000 hectares of forests vanish annually.
“We must understand that in addition to learners having food, they need a conducive and cool environment to enjoy the learning. I now want to draw a bell, to rally all of you policy makers and school heads, that a Woodlot for every school will ensure that our forest cover is intact. It will also ensure a cool learning environment,” said Winther.
Andrew Kirungi Byakutaga Ateenyi, the Prime Minister of Bunyoro Kingdom pleadged to support these efforts through a network of County Chiefs.
“I will work with our network of County Chiefs and Kingdom officials to ensure that we contribute to the overall challenge of restoring our landscapes and make them a better place to live in,” said the Prime Minister.
He called on all the citizens of Bunyoro to rally and consider environmental conservation.
