The Chief Operations Officer at World Wide Fund for Nature(WWF) Uganda, Agneta Winther has urged government to consider reducing taxes on clean cooking technology which will in turn have a ripple effect on reducing pressure on the country's forests.
“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.
Winther said reducing taxes on clean cooking technology will see most Ugandans who rely mostly on firewood and charcoal abandon them and this will reduce pressure on the country's forests.
She said in their efforts to replenish the green environment, they have partnered with Bunyoro kingdom , religious leaders and schools within the Albertine region to plant trees , specifically meant for firewood.
“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.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 noted.
“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.
The official from WWF Uganda said the trees will also be used for fruits but also for a cool environment for learners.
Bunyoro Kingdom Prime Minister, Andrew Kirungi Byakutaga Ateenyi welcomed the initiative that he said will be implemented up to the latter.
