By Michael Kanaabi Dollar
At the recently held board meeting of the 5th board of Directors of the National Forestry Authority that took place at the National Seed Centre in Namanve, the newly appointed board of directors that took office earlier April 2021 vowed to ensure the country’s forests are conserved and used for production sustainably.
In a statement unveiling their 5 year strategy for 2021-2026, the board led by its Chairman Engineer Dr. Christopher Ebal emphasized innovation, increased resource mobilisation and putting infrastructure plus improved security with in the country’s Central Forest Reserves to ensure better conservation and sustainable production in the forests.
The newly instituted board of directors also pledged to work tirelessly to educate the public on their role in contributing towards sustainable use and conservation of forests through improved branding, publicity campaigns and awareness events.
“ The reason behind this is to make conservation of forests a collective and National effort that doesn’t involve NFA alone but other stake holders and the general public as a whole,” they said.
This strategic plan which is aligned with NDP III under the Water, Environmental resources, Land and climate change section also points out the restoration of degraded forest reserves and increasing forestry cover across the country to foster sustainable economic development as one of its objectives.
According to a joint statement released by the board achieving the above objective will involve opening boundaries of all Central Forest Reserves, surveying them again, demarcating of boundaries to keep off encroachers plus setting up infrastructure like roads, monitoring stations and equipment to ensure the forests are being managed efficiently.
In terms of improving productivity with in the sector, the NFA board agreed to supply and produce forest products equitably by ensuring an increased supply of seedlings and seeds to plantation owners and other stake holders, increase the coverage of plantations with in CFRS and diversify the products offered by the forestry sector to grow Non Tax Revenue.
To keep off encroachers the board plans to push forward a plan to set up a protection force that includes armed rangers, investigators and prosecutors to deal with encroachers that breach the laws and protocols governing CFRS for personal benefit. “Although currently the Environmental police is supporting the forestry sector in this role they are too stretched and thin on ground rendering them ineffective.”
Other challenges the new board has promised to deal with effectively include improving staff numbers and capacity, mobilising more resources from government and donors to invest more in the sector and working together with the lands Ministry and local governments to get rid of all illegal land titles of areas in Central Forest Reserves in the hands of private owners.
With the above undertaken the forestry sector according to members of NFA’S board of directors will be in much better shape by the time gthe 5 year mandate of the current board expires.
Some of the other members of the new NFA board include Chebet Charity, Abdullah Hussein Shire and Tina Achilla.
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