By: Kwizera Joseph Jojo

Kampala: From November 30th to December 12th, guests from all over the world were in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to attend the COP28 UN Climate Summit.

As usual, Uganda was represented by a huge delegation of over 600 officials at the summit. Most of these officials were more like tourists on holiday than serious negotiators determined to clinch a good deal for Uganda. A deal to green Uganda, reduce pollution and make the country more resilient to the adverse effects of climate change is what is important.

Summits like this are an opportunity for wasteful spending by the government of Uganda. Government officials are always shamelessly itching for such summits every year.

But Uganda, which may soon be an oil-producing and exporting country is in a dilemma, just like other oil-producing countries, including the United Arab Emirates who were the host country to COP 28. These countries would rather eat their cake and have it.

For a country which is a climate polluter, an accomplice in perpetuating global warming, to pretend to be supporting measures to curb global warming barely hides the hypocrisy.

A great deal was discussed at the summit about measures that need to be taken to reduce the damaging effects of global warming which is the cause of adverse climate change. As you may know, global warming is brought about mostly by the burning of fossil fuels and the release of harmful gases into the atmosphere.

I could bet though that what was pre-occupying the mind of the Uganda delegation was how they could grab the finance that may be availed by rich nations to poor nations, as a token guilt payment for the damage that rich nations are doing to the global environment.

The so-called rich nations of the world like America, the European Union countries and China are the biggest climate polluters of all time.

So at summits like COP28, all that developing countries can expect is a half-hearted commitment from rich and polluting countries that they will pay for the havoc they are causing to the world’s atmosphere.

Back to Uganda, where we are busy distributing national forest reserves to greedy individuals who cut down forest trees to make charcoal. We are degrading the land through deforestation and irresponsible agriculture, thereby destroying delicate ecosystems and biodiversity.

We watch on as the country’s forest cover is depleted to nothing. We maintain high taxes on solar power and green products making it unaffordable to most Ugandans. We maintain high taxes on Liquified Natural Gas LNG for cooking, making it unaffordable for the majority.

How then could we claim to be serious as a country about greening Uganda and making it more resilient to the adverse effects of climate change?

We can waste billions of shillings attending climate conferences. But what matters in the end is how many trees the country has. Trees are more valuable than oil because they produce the oxygen that we breathe.

Let’s cover our cities and countryside with trees and forests.

Kwizera Joseph Jojo is a concerned Ugandan and National Unity Platform (NUP) Political Activistz