Hundreds of runners turned up on Sunday morning to participate in the second edition of Tree Adoption Uganda’s Run4Climate marathon focused on creating awareness about the adverse effects of climate change and increasing Uganda’s forest cover.
The run was held under the theme “Protect, Restore and Conserve” with an aim to raise funds to grow 100,000 trees and restore 200 acres of degraded land across the country.
The 10km race was won by Otim Emmanuel while the 5Km was won by Amadile Majip and a forest of 2,000 and 1,000 trees respectively will be planted in their names in honor of their win.
“We are carrying a multisectoral approach towards climate action to restore Uganda’s forest cover,” noted Dr. Charles Batte, the Chief Executive Officer, Tree Adoption Uganda.
“Restoration is needed because Uganda has lost a lot of its forest cover, meaning that we do not have the sync for the carbon that pollutes the atmosphere leading to global warming.”
Winners of the run during a photo moment.
According to the National Forestry Authority, the country is currently losing an average of 122,000 hectares of forest cover annually, a situation that needs to be corrected.
“In 1990, we had 24% of the total land coverage of Uganda under forests; it decreased to around 9% by 2013. We have slightly recovered, increasing from 9% to 12.4% at the end of 2020,”said Issa Katwesigye, the Assistant Commissioner in the Forestry Department of the Ministry of Water and Environment.
According to Tree Adoption Uganda’s Dr.Batte, it is high time all Ugandans joined forces to ensure the environment is replenished.
“We hope to get to 24% of forest cover by Vision 2040. We are experiencing catastrophes like unpredictable weather patterns, landslides, droughts and torrential rainfall affecting agriculture and leading to food insecurity,”Dr. Batte said.
“It is each and everyone’s responsibility to ensure our landscapes are restored and the forests are restored to play their ecosystem functions,”
He said the trees grown will be tracked and mapped using the tree adoption mobile phone technology and satellite imagery by species, planter and GPS code in order to improve transparency and monitoring.
In 2020, the organization held its first edition of the Run4Climate and contributed to the planting and growing of 30,000 trees in communities in climate-ravaged areas of Bududa.
Tree Adoption Uganda (TAU) is a youth-centric NGO established in 2013 and powered by the vision of creating communities where people and nature flourish.
Through landscape restoration activities like growing trees and agroforestry we build resilience for small holder farmers against the changing climate while economically empowering unemployed young people in Uganda’s rural communities through education and training on setting up and managing indigenous tree nurseries and tree farms.
- Latest
- Trending
