Protesters outside the Uganda High Commission in London urging Uganda’s president not to sign a law targeting LGBT organisations . Credit:

Dinendra Haria / Alamy Stock Photo.

Gender and Sexuality Amidst the Climate Crisis In Uganda.

Discriminatory gender and social norms ensure women and sexual and gender minorities in Uganda face disproportionate impacts from climate change and have the fewest resources to cope. Both groups experience discrimination, systemic violence, restricted access and ownership of land, lower income and fewer opportunities, while minority communities also face persecution, social stigma and discriminatory laws. All of these factors drive higher vulnerability, reduced adaptation and mitigation capability, and further marginalises already marginalised people.

In eastern Uganda, particularly in the districts of Bududa and Mbale, persistent extreme weather conditions, such as frequent floods and landslides, have claimed hundreds of lives and property. In August 2022, flash flooding in Mbale district killed at least 29 people and displaced over 5,600 others. Marginalised women and gender and sexual diverse people in these areas are particularly at risk when disaster strikes.

Women and Climate Change

According to the UN, 80% of people displaced by climate change are women. Their roles as primary caregivers and providers of food and fuel make them more vulnerable when flooding and drought occur. The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) notes that women are responsible for 70-80% of agricultural production, as well as nutrition and food security at the family level. Bad and extreme weather conditions - which are increasing - or periods of prolonged drought mean that Ugandan women's traditional responsibilities become increasingly uncertain and dangerous. In rural areas this means girls and women must make more frequent and longer journeys in search of food, firewood and water which may lead to less time for any educational activities and attending training, less time to complete other household and family responsibilities, and makes them vulnerable to sexual assault and domestic violence (see: United Nations Development Programme). 

Women in Uganda own less land and have less secure land rights than men despite their crucial role in agriculture and food production. Uganda has a comprehensive land policy that grants all adults equal rights to own and co-own land, however in 2011 UBOS showed that as many as 61.3% of women do not own land and are only given access to it through husbands and male family members. Most land in Uganda is effectively preserved through customary arrangements that restrict women's land ownership. This limits women's ability to adapt to or mitigate the effects of climate change, while the day-to-day impacts of climate change make them more vulnerable to a diverse range of issues including gender-based violence and relying on precarious livelihoods. Important efforts are being made to address some of these challenges. For example, Kwatanisa Women Farmers Group, an organisation founded by 10 women in 2007, works to address issues of  food preservation, reforestation and afforestation aimed at reducing the effects of climate disasters on rural women.

The LGBTQ+ Community and Climate Change

Homophobic and transphobic laws and attitudes are widespread in Uganda, and LGBTQ+ people face persecution. The 1950 Penal Code prohibits same-sex sexual activity, in 2005 a constitution amendment was signed to prevent same-sex couples from marrying, and the 2019 Sexual Offences Bill sought to further criminalise same-sex relationships. Although the President did not give assent to the Bill, the fact it passed Parliament in May 2021 shows the continued hostility towards the LGBTQ+ community by those in positions of power. Due to discrimination and exclusion from social and family  networks, sexual and gender diverse people live in constant danger of harassment and abuse. These issues are  intensified as a result of relocation, insecurity, and loss of livelihoods caused by climate-related disasters and the implications of changing seasons and weather patterns. LGBTQ+ people frequently struggle economically in the face of harsh weather patterns, due both to a lack of resources and how competition for scarce resources often benefits those with higher social standing. Climate change also negatively impacts when and how many crops can be grown in a season, which impacts LGBTQ+ people harder, as they often have less access to land or places to turn for support. When landslides and floods hit mountainous areas of east and western Uganda, LGBTQ+ people cannot access the same assistance and relief as others because they are viewed as criminals.

 

Lack of recognition of same sex couples under Ugandan law exposes such couples to the risk of not enjoying equal protection of rights in case of environmental disasters. For example, land acquisition and resettlement practices have evolved to entitle couples to have rights to compensation before their land is given away. The same rights are not extended to same sex couples. Meanwhile, assistance programmes tend to have specific ideas of ‘the family’ and gender, which sexual and gender diverse people do not match, often leading to their exclusion.

  

Despite these challenges, the LGBTQ+ community in Uganda have taken the initiative to inform, organise and act in response to climate change through training programmes and workshops. For example, in 2022 Rights 4 Her Uganda carried out a dialogue with LBQ womxn on climate change and environmental issues, and their relationship to bodily autonomy and gender-based violence. The organisation also runs environmental academies to increase knowledge and understanding of climate change within the LGBTQ+ community. Ahead of COP27 in Egypt, Rights 4 Her Uganda’s Executive Director called for greater inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in climate change discussions and programmes in Uganda and beyond.

How is the Government responding?

In recent  years, the Government has increased efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change: the Climate Change Department was established within the Ministry of Water and Environment to oversee and enforce climate action, and the National Climate Change Act 2021 hopes to help enable Uganda to meet its commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement. The Government was intentional about gathering women's perspectives to inform the new Climate Change Act. Through meetings organised for women by the Ministry of Water and Environment, women's organisations such as the Uganda Women's Network were involved in reviewing and commenting on the draft law. As a result, gender issues and women's rights are mentioned in the Climate Change Act. For example, it calls for efforts on gender mainstreaming in climate change adaptation and mitigation programmes. However, the challenge is in putting law and policy into action. Vulnerable groups of people and the gendered effects of climate change are often disregarded during implementation. Additional efforts must be made to ensure that financial and technical resources are available for effective implementation and gender mainstreaming in climate change initiatives. These must acknowledge differing levels of vulnerability and ability to mitigate the impacts of climate change, while also promoting equal rights, opportunities, and treatment for all.

Total Energies' Uganda Oil Project Advances Despite Opposition From Climate Campaigners

 Total Energies is pressing on with it’s $10 billion oil project, in Uganda’s lake Albertine Rift Basin despite rising criticism from climate activists and environmentalists concerned about the oil project's emissions profile and environmental impact.

Environmentalists argue that oil production will shift a large portion of the Uganda’s energy needs toward carbon-emitting fossil fuels making it more difficult for the country to adapt to and mitigate the effects of the climate change reality.

Jobi Rii-5 well pad construction site in Murchison Falls National Park ,Tilenga project area operated by Total Energies in Uganda’s Albertine Graben Region.

 

Total Energies has begun to invest in renewable energy sources such as solar power and undertaking several initiatives aimed at tackling climate change and lowering it’s carbon foot print but activists say the company must do more to fight climate change.

Last year, the company signed a solar project agreement with the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development for possible deployment of 120 MW of solar energy.This is part of the company’s commitment to develop 1GW of renewable energy in Uganda by 2030.

“The solar energy projects are part of Total Energies global multi-energy strategy and climate ambition to reach net zero emissions by 2050,”says Philippe Groueix, the General Manager of Total Energies Uganda.

In addition to renewable energy initiatives, Groueix says that Total Energies is working with government to use its existing infrastructure in Uganda to assist in the implementation of e-mobility infrastructure. The company owns and operates over 200 petrol stations, which it intends to upgrade to include charging stations for electric motorcycles and cars.

  A Resettlement house  constructed by Total Energies  installed with Solar panels in Ngwedo sub-county, Buliisa district 

 

"We plan to not only produce oil, but also to become a key player in renewable energy in Uganda to address the twin challenges of energy poverty and lower emissions," Groueix said.

However, environmentalists remain concerned about the environmental impact of Total Energies oil projects and continue to advocate for their total abandonment in favour of renewable energy ,based on the Paris Agreement on climate, which aims for a 50 per cent cut in emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2050.

“These oil projects,will worsen the impacts of climate change that are already affecting poor people in Uganda and Africa, especially those depending on their lands to live.What is needed is gross reductions of emissions,” said Juliette Renaud senior campaigner at Friends of the Earth France.

Globally, there is growing recognition of the need to transition to more sustainable energy sources and reduce reliance on fossil fuels in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions and stay below 1.5 degrees celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.According to the UN, coal, oil, and gas are by far the most significant contributors to global climate change, accounting for more than 75% of world greenhouse gas emissions and almost 90% of total carbon dioxide emissions. The sun's heat is trapped as more greenhouse gas emissions from dirty fuels blanket the earth.

Total Energies operates the Tilenga and EACOP oil projects. Tilenga covers the remote districts of Buliisa, Hoima, Kikuube, and Nwoya near the Murchison Falls National Park. It consists of six oil fields and is expected to have 400 wells drilled in 31 locations. It will also house an industrial area, support camps, a central processing facility, and feeder pipelines.

The EACOP entails construction of a buried 1,443 km oil pipeline between the town of Kabaale in Uganda and the port of Tanga in Tanzania. The pipeline includes six pumping stations and a heat tracing system.

 

 

                                             A map showing the EACOP route

The pipeline has the capacity of transporting 216,000bopd and is operated by the EACOP Ltd whose shareholders are Total Energies  62%, Uganda National Oil Company 15%, China’s CNOOC 8% and the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation 15%.

A report released in October 2022,by the US-based Climate Accountability Institute CIA states that the EACOP will produce vast amounts of carbon dioxide that will result in 379m tonnes of climate-heating pollution over a period of 25 years, the project’s shelf-life.This is far greater than estimates in the EACOP's environmental impact assessment reports , which CIA notes that accounted for a mere 1.8 percent of the project's emissions and did not take into account downstream emissions such as transporting oil from the pipeline to global markets.The report further notes that in the years of peak oil flow, the associated emissions would be more than double those of Uganda and Tanzania in 2020.

 

A chart showing the full project emissions from construction to end use, 25-yr life source,Climate Accountability Institute

“The scale of TotalEnergies’ crude oil extraction and transport through the EACOP pipeline can not be mitigated by the company’s initiative to develop renewable energy sources and plant trees,”said Rick Heede ,author of the report.

Last year ,the European Union’s Parliament passed a resolution urging the TotalEnergies and government of Uganda to abandon the EACOP project citing climate destruction and human rights concerns.President Yoweri Museveni responded to this resolution with a twitter post where he stated that Europe's failure to meet its climate goals should not be Africa's problem.  

"We will not allow African progress to be the victim of Europe's failure to meet its own climate goals. It is morally bankrupt for Europeans to expect to take Africa's fossil fuels for their own energy production but refuse to countenance African use of those same fuels for theirs," he said

 

A well pad Construction site at Kingfisher Development area operated by China’s CNOOC in Kikuube district

Total Energies has launched the Tilenga Biodiversity Program , an initiative aimed at protecting and conserving biodiversity in and around the Tilenga project area.Implementation of this program will include among others protection of 10,000 hectares of natural forest threatened with deforestation and restoration of 1,000 hectares of tropical forest.

“We are mindful of the sensitive context within which we are undertaking our activities. We have thus made a commitment to ensure that we implement action plans designed to produce net positive impact on biodiversity,”Groueix stated in a statement posted on the Total Energies website.

But activists are not persuaded.Some have formed a campaign called #STOPEACOP .They want government and TotalEnergies to halt oil projects in order to demonstrate its commitment to carbon reduction and energy transition.

“Most fossil projects have between 25-30 year life spans .Getting into this type of investment will definitely undermine any safer alternatives and will lock a country on dirty fuel for decades, and potentially leave them with stranded assets,”says Abiud Onyach the STOPEACOP Communications and Digital associate

Total energies also has an ongoing law suit filed in France , where a number of environmental organizations accuse the company of green washing "misleading consumers about its efforts to combat climate change." 

 “Total Energies says they will leave a "net positive impact on biodiversity" but it is part of their green washing. You cannot have a positive impact on biodiversity with oil wells in a natural protected area, and with a pipeline crossing many fragile ecosystems,” says Renaud.

World Bank figures indicate that only 3% of the world's CO2 emissions originate from Africa, the second-largest and second-most populous continent, which is home to around 20% of the world's population.Africa remains the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, although contributing the least to the climate crisis.

 

Uganda emits only 0.01% of the world's total carbon emissions, and its per-person emissions of CO2 are likewise quite low at 0.13 tonnes.However, analysts predict that once oil production begins, this will change.

 

“EACOP intends to implement a number of carbon footprint reduction strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the operation of the pipeline, these include the complete electrification of pumping stations in Uganda, where grid electricity is primarily produced by hydroelectric plants, and a hybrid power generation solution in Tanzania that involves solar energy from five solar farms that will be installed along the pipeline, ” says Peter Muliisa, the Chief legal and Cooperate affairs for UNOC

 

Uganda’s GHG Emissions Profile

Climate change is a reality in Uganda.The dramatic reduction in the size of ice caps on the Rwenzori mountains and an increase in the frequency and duration of droughts have both been related to changing climate trends. In August 2022, flash flooding in Mbale district killed at least 29 people and displaced over 5,600 others.

 

According to the 2022 Uganda Nationally Determined Contributions report submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Uganda’s GHG emissions have been on the rise from 53.4 MtCO2e in 2005 to 90.1 MtCO2e in 2015 .

The Land Use and Forestry sector accounts for majority of emissions with 59.5% of the total emissions.Agriculture is the second largest, contributing 26.9%, followed by the energy sector 10.7%and waste 2.3%. The energy sector, which includes transport, power generation, and oil and gas exploration and production, accounts for 10%, with the transportation sub-sector accounting for around 66% of energy sector emissions.

This story was produced with support from the Africa Centre for Media Excellence 

In Kibera, Africa's largest slum, an indigenous women's group fights hunger and preserves traditional food

Nubians have a distinct culture that has been upheld by successive generations.They have traditional outfits and traditional cuisines

An indigenous women’s group in Kenya’s kibera slum is undertaking backyard sack gardening helping preserve their traditional foods while tackling food insecurity.

Mazingira is a Nubian women’s group that was formed to empower Nubian women on environmental conservation through sustainable urban farming as well as the importance of food sovereignty-regularly expressed as the right and responsibility of people to have access to healthy and culturally appropriate foods.

According to Malasen Hamida the leader of the group,backyard gardening is enabling Nubian families to remain food secure but also safe guard traditional Nubian foods in their community.

“We hope to solve the interconnected problems of lack of affordable, nutritious food and the difficulties of farming in an over populated slum area while spotlighting the significance of our traditional foods and the cultural values woven into our these foods,” says Hamida.

The Nubian community of Kenya is composed of up to 100,000 descendants of people originally from the Nuba mountains of northern Sudan and Southern Egypt  who were brought to Kenya over 100 years ago to serve in the East African Rifles, a regiment of the British colonial armed forces. 

In 1912, the British government designated some 4,197 acres of land for the Nubians to settle on. They named the land which is located on the outskirts of the city of Nairobi- Kibra meaning land of forest.Kibera is the Africa’s biggest informal settlement and home to approximately 250,000 people across an area of just 2.5 kilometres. Kibera is a densely populated place where most people face hunger and diet quality-related issues.While Covid19 made food insecurity worse, the issue predated the pandemic.

According to Hamida, the Nubian community in particular experiences disproportionately high rates of food insecurity as a byproduct forced relocation to rural areas, a settler-colonial activity which led to degradation of traditional subsistence patterns.Nubians also struggle with insecure land rights as their claim to land in Kibera has been contested by successive governments.

“Nubians have distinct culture that has been upheld by the successive generations .They have traditional cuisines which include vegetables such as okra stew,fava beans,courgettes,spinach ,amaranth and peas,” says Hamida

Mazingira helps the women grow these vegetables by providing seedlings and training the women on how to set up backyard gardens.

 Africa continues to grapple with the worst food crisis in decades buoyed by the Covid pandemic, climate change, Russia’s war in Ukraine and increases in conflict. An estimated 346 million people in Africa are affected by the food crisis, according to recent reports by the Food and Agriculture Organization. 

Indigenous groups who are mostly marginalized experience disproportionately high rates of food insecurity due to migration and relocation to urban lands ,which results into degradation of their traditional subsistence patterns.

 In Uganda, 36-year-old food activist and agronomist Edie Mukiibi leads Slow Food a global network of local communities, founded in 1989 to prevent the disappearance of local food cultures ,traditions and counteract the rise of fast food culture.

The Slow Food movement involves millions of people in over 160 countries, working to ensure that everyone has access to good, clean, and fair food produced with low environmental impact.Slow Food is spreading across Africa, with over 3,600 kitchen gardens since 2011.

Students of Kisowera secondary shool in Uganda pose next to one of the slow food gardens which is part of the Slow Food Uganda program

“Our local food species are dissapearing and being replaced by single-use hybrid seeds controlled by multinational corporations.Widespread pesticide use is causing many local species to become extinct .Food related health diseases are spreading.Our food system is our primary responsibility.The only way to reform the food system, is to promote indigenous food systems through agroecology which is sustainable, socially equitable agriculture and this is what the slow food movement is about,” says Mukiibi.

According to the International Food Policy Research Institute’s global food policy report 2023, an estimated 20% of people in Sub-Saharan Africa that is some 282 million people suffer food insecurity and malnutrition, more than double the share of any other region.

“Indigenous food species should be promoted because they are more resistant to the vagaries of climate change like drought, more nutritious, healthier and resistant to pests and diseases unlike most genetically modified crops,” says Jeniffer Anena an agronomist from the Water Governance Institute Uganda.