An assessment of the impacts of oil palm in Kalangala and Buvuma
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Date
2019
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Ecological Trends Alliance Texts
Abstract
The Government of Uganda had the best intentions when oil palm was
established. The aim was to reduce poverty among the Lake Victoria island
populations of Kalangala and Buvuma districts, and contribute to import
substitution through domestic production of palm oil. The project established
plantations in Kalangala in 2002 with crude palm oil production starting in
2010, and plantations will begin to be established in Buvuma from 2019. The
benefits are readily reported by the main donor IFAD and the sole company
BIDCO, part of Oil Palm Uganda Ltd. partly owned by Wilmar. However, the
project implementation strategy fell short on a number of aspects, leading to
multiple negative impacts on the intended project beneficiaries as well as on
the environment. It is thus crucial to acknowledge and better understand these
impacts, mitigate them, and prevent their reoccurrence in the other suggested
oil palm expansion hubs. This section summarizes detailed interdisciplinary
research undertaken in 2017 and 2018 (Ssemmanda and Opige 2018,
2019) on the negative impacts of oil palm development, and makes solid
recommendation to the government and its implementing partners, based on
the findings and lessons learned. The five research papers that this is based
on are included in full in the following sections, and are each summarized
in separate policy briefs (Bigirwa et al., 2019; Kakungula-Mayambala and
Tibugwisa., 2019; Masiga et al., 2019; Mwima et al., 2019; Nangendo et
al., 2019).
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Ssemmanda R. and M. Opige (eds.) 2019 An assessment of the impacts of oil palm in Kalangala and Buvuma. Lessons learned and recommendations for future developments Wageningen, the Netherlands: Tropenbos International and Ecological Trends Alliance