Uganda: With an eye to the future, this community is prioritising the climate resilience of its children

 

From improved cookstoves, and tree-planting to roadworks, communities in Nwoya District, northern Uganda, are taking a long hard look at how climate change is impacting their lives and identifying solutions that will bring the most benefits for the largest number of people. Perhaps not surprisingly, the local school children are the focus and primary beneficiary of many of their efforts.

Akello Lucy Okot is a mother to four and a teacher at a local secondary school in Nwoya District. She’s had a front-row seat on some of the recent changes made with a Performance-Based Climate Resilience Grant received from the UN Capital Development Fund that was used to introduce improved cooking stoves in the school.

“Students have learned about the technology which the school hopes they will appreciate in their homes,” said Ms. Okot, explaining that children have learned about the negative environmental impacts of tree-cutting for cooking fuel and the negative effects of breathing wood smoke at close quarters with the hope that they take these lessons to their families and trigger many families in the community to reassess the fuel they use to cook the family meals.

“The project should be expanded in the other schools. Using large amounts of firewood for cooking leads to massive tree cutting and degrading [of the] environment,” Ms Okot added.

The improved cookstoves are just one of a series of actions being taken in Nwoya District, where the local government is implementing the UNCDF’s Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL) – a mechanism for channelling finance to local governments for locally-led adaptation to climate change.

In Uganda, funding from the European Union, Belgium, Denmark, and Sweden, as well as the NDC Partnership, has enabled four districts to begin work on 12 resilience-building investments working through the Uganda ministries of local government, finance and planning, and economic development.

LoCAL uses performance-based climate resilience grants to boost local-level access to finance to invest in resilience building. But it’s the community themselves that identify the actions to be taken through a series of consultations and planning meetings. In Nwoya District – a region where many families rely on subsistence farming – the community’s children are the focal point for most of the activities that have been planned.

As well as the improved cookstoves, the community also elected to undertake a programme of tree planting around some of the school buildings. The trees, when mature, will help to protect the school buildings from high winds that have damaged some of the children’s classrooms in recent storms as well as provide much-needed shade for the pupils and fruits from that tress that will be used in the school feeding programme.

Ogonyi and Akago River crossing, a local road and culvert in Anaka Subcounty, has also been improved to make it more resilient to flooding, which besets the region on an increasingly regular basis. The improved road will make it easier for children to walk to school and easier for them and their families to access other social services, such as hospitals.

“Too much rain during raining season affects children going to school,” said Jacky Abalo, a mother of four and a local community leader. “Also, health services [are affected] – especially expectant women going to the hospital, and lack of market access for farmers.”

Some local parents have also seen their incomes boosted by taking short-term work opportunities as construction workers on the climate resilience-building projects. Ronald Ochen is 24 and has one child, aged two. Over three months he earned about US$ 250 from working as a day labourer on the Ogonyi and Akago River crossing.

“I worked as a casual labourer at the culverts construction site of Ogonyi and Akago in Anaka Subcounty,” said Mr Ochen. “The project has provided me with finances that helped me hire a farming garden and tractor and open it for crop farming.” Mr Ochen plans to plant beans and has bought two goats, adding: “The little incomes, if used well, can help meet needs.”

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF).