Last week, Uganda’s Water ministry led celebrations to mark the Green Week aiming at conserving the environment.
An environmental-Development oriented NGO, Million Trees National Initiative Uganda came up with a new strategy of Improving the declining forest cover in Uganda known as One Constituency One Million Trees Program aiming at growing One Million Indigenous Trees in every Constituency.
It started with Ibanda District where this NGO has managed to grow more than 300,000 tree seedlings across schools, churches, Mosques, Gov’t public lands as well as along Roadsides since 2019 (when & where the Organization started.
The Organization CEO, Dr Semakura Jibril Owomugisha, went ahead to donate 38000 Indigenous tree seedlings to Ibanda District and went ahead to give Technical knowledge to all farmers, Headteachers, Religious leaders on how to grow and Benefit from Natural forests.
“Various species of our trees have various functions like Medicinal, Mosquito repellents, rainfall formation apart from targeting them for timbers, logs, fuelwoods. Tree species like Gmelina, Bruvelia, Afrizeria, Wabujia, Prunus Africana, Bamboo are under serious human attack which has endangered our ecosystem. Rampant abnormal climatic changes has resulted from poor Human-Environmental Relationship in Uganda,” Jibril said.
National Green Week is an annual campaign, started by the Green Education Foundation, that kicks off during the first week in February and lasts through the end of April.
He went ahead to urge school leaders to actively engage their 2020/2021 finalists in growing of trees across their school compounds, school gardens under “My Tree-My name” Drive. This drive is encouraging all finalists to grow these trees as MEMORABLE COVID-19 Trees renamed after their names and to keep these finalists remembered as students, pupils who did their exams in COVID-19 era.
More so this Drive “My Tree-My Name” will increase affiliations between students, pupils and their schools.
About Million Trees National Initiative Uganda
It is a registered NGO, working Hand-in-hand with respective Gov’t ministries basically meant to increase Uganda’s forest cover that has declined from 24% (1990) to 9%(2018) to 12.4%(2020).
This Organization is actively Promoting Afforestation, Agroforestry as well as Promoting Urban farming. MTNi-Ug is remembered to have engaged actively in the issues of Kei-Forest in Yumbe District, Bunjako forest in Mpigi as well as Save Saza land Campaign in Ibanda District.
Being a broad-based Organization it continues to improve Household income, Creating Green jobs for Youths as well as Food Security by donating Fruit seedlings, short term vegetables plants like Cabbages, tomatoes, Carrots, to Peasants locally. It encourages and promotes organic farming by freely giving out Organic pesticides and fertilizers to it’s peasants.