Diana Arinitwe is aware of the risk posed by the Nyamwamba River in western Uganda all too properly.
When the river’s banks burst in May 2020, her house in Kasese district was nearly fully lower off by floodwater. Other residents close by noticed their homes swallowed and have been pressured to hunt shelter in a camp for the displaced.
Now Arinitwe fears her house will likely be subsequent as authorities wrestle to crack down on illegal sand mining at a time when local weather change is bringing extra excessive rainfall and flooding.
Local specialists and officers warn that the largely unchecked commerce is weakening the Nyamwamba – creating pits alongside its mattress and banks – and placing communities in ever higher hazard of getting their houses, farmland, and livelihoods washed away.
“I fear that the sand mining on the riverbank may cause the river to channel more water our way and drive us from our homes,” Arinitwe informed the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Over the previous decade, illegal sand mining has turn out to be an increasing number of frequent alongside the river to fulfill surging demand for the pure useful resource for building and different functions as Uganda’s inhabitants grows and the nation turns into extra city.
Efforts to crack down on the mining are tough partially as a result of some miners in Kasese say it’s their solely supply of revenue.
Activists have bemoaned a scarcity of will from native authorities and police to implement a nationwide ban imposed final 12 months on sand mining in wetlands.
The ban follows a 2019 setting legislation that enables the follow in rivers and lakes solely with state permission.
Sand mining, usually finished manually with spades or with excavator vans within the dry season, reduces the quantity of water-holding sand out there within the Nyamwamba, slicing its capability to carry extra water throughout heavy rains and floods.
That, mixed with riverbanks weakened by mining, can imply each extra flooding in moist instances and fewer water availability in dry intervals.
At some instances of 12 months, excessive temperatures linked to local weather change are extra quickly melting glaciers on the peaks of the fabled Rwenzori mountains – dubbed the “Mountains of the Moon” – inflicting extra water to journey down the river and, finally, worsening flooding.
Evelyn Mugume, the setting officer for Kasese municipality, mentioned sand mining was serving to the river soar its banks in flood intervals.
“As the sand mining activity is being done, it creates pits either on the riverbed or on the riverbank” and destroys soil-holding vegetation on the riverbanks, she mentioned, which then can push floodwater in new instructions.
Little accountability
People in Kasese mentioned the floods are intensifying every year on account of sand mining, however famous 2020 was a very unhealthy 12 months.
The flooding that May – which threatened Arinitwe’s house – broken or affected almost 25 000 homes and 173 000 folks, in response to a report by native authorities.
Aaron Kasyasa, Kasese’s senior civil engineer, mentioned he feared that future flooding may finally trigger extra buildings to break down.
The floods haven’t solely prompted destruction of houses and displacement but additionally hampered agriculture within the space.
Muhindo Joselyene, a farmer in Nyakasanga village, mentioned sand mining had channeled mineral-laden water to her farm in 2020, ruining its soil and crops.
“My farm looks like it was cemented – the copper in the water forms a hard upper layer and does not allow crops to grow,” she mentioned.
“I lost a whole two acres of maize when the river flooded, and there was no one to blame, or compensation.”
Every hour, a whole bunch of tonnes of sand are harvested from the Nyamwamba, native miners say. Most is offered to feed a industrial building increase within the area, or smuggled throughout the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Masereka Ibrahim Salim, a 28-year-old sand miner and dealer, mentioned he had labored within the commerce for greater than 15 years and would solely go away it if he may discover different work that paid as properly.
Sand mining has sparked its personal economic system within the space, with people whose personal land has collapsed into the river claiming components of the riverbank and charging sand miners a charge to reap, regardless of the very fact permits haven’t been granted, Salim mentioned.
However, when the Thomson Reuters Foundation contacted a cattle farmer who Salim mentioned owned the land the place he mines sand, the person mentioned he knew nothing about Salim’s declare. This is the case with many such websites throughout the Nyamwamba, in response to miners.
No single answer
Law enforcement has been lax in coping with the issue, and native authorities aren’t well-equipped to behave, mentioned Charles Masumbuko, head of the Alliance for Development Uganda, a civil society group working with communities in Kasese.
Masumbuko mentioned he believed the variety of miners and mining spots was growing as rising floods deposited extra sand.
Under Uganda’s 2019 setting act, sand and clay mining require a consumer allow from the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA).
However, in response to questions on sand mining on the Nyamwamba, NEMA spokesman Tony Achidria mentioned the authority doesn’t problem permits for mining on riverbanks and lake shores.
While the sand mining commerce has continued unabated regardless of periodic warnings from the federal government, numerous options have been put ahead to deal with flooding alongside the Nyamwamba.
Callist Tindimugaya, an official at Uganda’s water and setting ministry, mentioned test dams and planting bamboo would decelerate floodwater, whereas Kasese’s former member of parliament Robert Centenary has proposed creating sand banks to guard communities.
“There is not one intervention that will work on its own but several of them will together,” mentioned Happy Ali, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which is working in Kasese.
