Govt recovers only 0.4% of degraded wetlands in 8years

By Ben Musanje

1^st Feb 2023

As the country prepares to join the international community to commemorate the World Wetlands Day tomorrow, the Ministry of Water and Environment has indicated that Uganda is having at least 9.3 percent intact wetland coverage.

By 1994, the wetland coverage on the surface area of Uganda was 15.6% composed of 37 wetlands, but over time, this gradually reduced to 13% by 2015.

The State Minister for Environment, Beatrice Atim Anywar while addressing the journalists at Media Center in Kampala ahead of the World Wetlands Day, said that there is a positive trend of restoring the 4.1% degraded wetlands in the country with only 0.4% being recovered in the last 8years.

Anywar says that only 8.9% of the 13% wetland coverage were intact but through several efforts of cancelation of titles issued in wetlands, blocking encroachments, demarcation of wetland boundaries, development of management plans and massive public awareness among others have contributed to some registered positives.

This year’s World Wetlands Day will be marked under the international theme; it’s time for wetland restoration, and the national theme is “Wetland restoration for people and nature” with ‘Restore Wetlands, save life’ as the slogan.

The national celebrations will be at Gweri Sub County headquarters grounds in Soroti District Local Government.