Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

The current project was formed as a result of increasing environmental degradation resulting into increased disease outbreaks, landslides and flooding events. This project was founded on 21st, July 2021.

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Best Estimate of GHG Avoidance/Reduction of This Project (Tonnes CO2 Equivalent/Year):

Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

Communities within the mountain areas of Elgon in Uganda mainly rely on agriculture as a source of livelihood. However, climate change has resulted into recurring hazard events within this area have continued to threaten the livelihoods of human populations. These hazards have been in form of drought events, landslides, pests and diseases among others. The current COVID-19 pandemic will further worsen the situation with far-reaching consequences on human livelihoods. In fact it is one of those boarder areas that suffered the prolonged lockdown because of it neighboring Kenya which had a high prevalence within the East African region. This undermined the already mild economic activities within the communities that would generate household income. The community in this area is in such a way that people have less access to information and communication tools in form of smartphones, computers, television sets, among others. It is therefore hard for people to access climate and environment related information disseminated at national scales. This thus calls for integrated solutions to realize equitable access to climate and environment related information within such communities in mountainous areas.
In light of the human population growth, the population growth rate within this area is at 3.6% which is above the national population growth rate of 3.3%. This may have wider consequences on the human-animal-environment interactions. This will likely increase spillover of disease pathogens to humans potentially leading to scenarios like for COVID-19. This will further widen inequalities within and outside our community. Besides population and infectious diseases, the insecurity within this area is high. This has been caused by the Karimojong cattle rustlers from the Northern parts of the mountain driving the human settlements towards the protected areas of Mount Elgon National Park in the Southern parts. This has continued to undermine people‚ livelihoods through restricted activities. This has also facilitated encroachment of the park widening conflicts. Additionally, the road network within the district is poor limiting market access for agricultural produce and other opportunities. These have continued to undermine access to quality education and food security. This has kept the community remote allowing for production of less educated and less skilled human resource that resorts to livelihood strategies that are detrimental to the environment. There is thus need for action in such communities to limit environmental degradation and sustain mountain resources that are estimated to benefit up to 50% of the world‚ population.
The village health teams that are mandated in Uganda to report health related events provide an avenue for community engagement on environmental protection. This is because they work closely with communities and interact with most households. Through mountain sentinels fellowship network, I had trained village health teams on the link between infectious diseases and environment. However, I had less content on environmental conservation and protection and I am confident that through this grant, I will access more improved materials to train more village health teams within this area. This will minimize impacts of environment related hazards at local, regional and global scales.

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