The partnership, a platform, a springboard

‘If one partner leaves the alliance, it would feel like the amputation of a leg.’ A conversation with Diana Nabiruma and Richard Ssemmanda of the Green Livelihoods Alliance, about their fight against deforestation for fossil fuel extraction in Uganda and their support for local communities – ‘and they protect us from intelligence agents’.

This article originally appeared in a special issue of journalistic platform Vice Versa about the Power of Voices partnerships.

Text: Pinkleen Oinokwesiga and Marc Broere. Header photo: McWilliams Wasswa

He provides the research that she uses for lobbying and advocating for the Green Livelihoods Alliance (GLA) in Uganda. He is mainly in the background and in the lee, while she often operates on the front line. What Richard Ssemmanda of the Ecological Trends Alliance (ETA) and Diana Nabiruma of the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) have in common: their unconditional love for forests and biodiversity.

At a young age, Nabiruma was already aware that humans abuse nature. She has wonderful memories of her primary school in the countryside, where the air was clean and you could drink water from the tap – but once she started studying in the capital, she developed asthma.

The day before our conversation, she had another seizure. ‘After much research, doctors found out that my asthma was caused by air pollution: Kampala is one of Africa’s most polluted cities. When I lived in a clean environment, my immune system was fine, but not anymore. So protecting nature is also something personal to me.’

Ssemmanda says the importance of nature is indescribable to him: since childhood, his whole life has revolved around plants and biodiversity. In his spare time, after school, he conducted his own experiments with plants. His father wanted him to study medicine, but he himself did not want to. ‘I said to him: have you ever seen anyone in hospital who is happy? You don’t have human happiness there – you find that in nature.’ 

‘We think we are wiser than nature, but the opposite is true: nature has always been smarter and watches us with her brilliant eye, and yet we do not respect her.’

Richard Ssemmanda- the Ecological Trends Alliance

That is why he went on to study wildlife ecology and specialised in the relationship between nature and humans. ‘My work is all about finding a balance between the two. We think we are wiser than nature, but the opposite is true: nature has always been smarter and watches us with her brilliant eye, and yet we do not respect her.’

Growing pressure on nature and those who defend it

The pressure on forests and other ecosystems is only growing. Oil and gas fields have been discovered and politicians think they should be exploited – even though they are located in protected forest and ecosystem areas, with unique flora and fauna.

It is up to GLA partners to ensure that local communities from those areas are heard in the discussion. Most of the time, they do not get the opportunity to speak, even though this pre-eminently concerns them, or do not even know about the impending doom.

Campaigns always enable local voices to be at the forefront. ‘That is different from just hearing the voice of a national organisation, which often gets support from abroad,’ says Nabiruma. ‘Then your activities can easily be branded as foreign interference.’

‘Our work,’ says Ssemmanda, ‘benefits the local people – that’s why they support us and protect us from the intelligence agents.’ These regularly come to communities to blacken us, portray us as “foreigners”.

‘That is not very successful, because the communities know how we support them. The agents are simply laughed at. If our work was not beneficial to local people, the government could easily have banned AFIEGO .’

Currently, the main GLA campaign is directed against deforestation for the East African Oil Pipeline (EACOP) – the oil will be pumped from Lake Albert and Murchison Falls National Park. The impact is huge: more than a quarter of the four hundred oil wells are in Murchison Falls, one of Uganda’s biggest attractions. 

Over two thousand square kilometres of protected area will be negatively affected by the pipeline: it will pass through forests and wildlife parks, rivers and wetlands in Uganda and Tanzania, and more than 12,000 people will be driven from their land. 

‘Displacement of people is a terrible thing, which you don’t wish on anyone,’ says Nabiruma. ‘Certainly not in Uganda, where fundamental rights are not protected properly and no fair compensation will be awarded.’

The impact of oil extraction on Ugandan ecosystems and communities

The GLA helps communities defend themselves through lobbying and advocacy – a dedicated network has been set up for this purpose. ‘For example, we get people to write to the government, oil companies and financial institutions,’ says Nabiruma. ‘We also support them in expressing concerns about climate change and about the impact of oil extraction on the environment.’

Both operate within a complex field of forces, in which civil society regularly has to deal with repression. GLA partners faced intimidation, arrests and the spreading of negative stories by the intelligence service. In particular, AFIEGO is tarnished as a “bad organisation” that allegedly has no mandate to act on behalf of the local population. 

Ssemmanda adds that AFIEGO is approached in a totally different way from ETA, which serves as a knowledge broker and facilitator of a multi-stakeholder dialogue, and he feels guilty about that at times: ‘We are a kind of backyard, while Diana is out there in the trenches. AFIEGO catches the bullets and keeps my organisation out of the firefight.’

While he is the one providing the ammunition used for fighting at the front. ‘Without our thorough and in-depth research, AFIEGO cannot engage in lobbying and advocacy. If the government thinks you are a threat, then you may be threatened. 

‘If you are not in the spotlight, like us, you have much less to do with that repression. The role and position you occupy in the civil society chain determine the response and resistance you can expect from the government.’

That government has a whole arsenal of means to thwart civil society. According to Nabiruma, there are several layers: laws on NGOs, public order control and anti-money laundering, and then you have the army, police and intelligence service at the national level, as well as district commissioners’ offices which in turn have their own security apparatus.

It is a grey area, says Nabiruma. ‘The government has all these troops at its disposal, but that does not mean that everyone within the state actually uses them. Suppose a local governor wants to vandalise the Bugoma forest, then that person can rely on the security apparatus for support.

‘Such governor then makes full use of the power he has under the law, which does not mean that the whole state will rally behind his plans and approve them.However, there are bad laws that ensure a local governor has the legal and physical support to do whatever he wants.’

And yet, there is still room to rebel then. ‘We campaigned with a local platform to save the Bugoma forest. The platform presented a petition to the president of Uganda. When he saw how strong the local support was, he intervened from on high by calling for the protection of the forest – only now it is still being destroyed…’

Around oil extraction, too, the views vary within the Ugandan government. ‘There are wildlife and tourism officials,’ says Ssemmanda, ‘who have expressed their dissatisfaction with the extraction, and they say the mitigation measures are insufficient. 

‘I know so many civil servants in Uganda, high and low, who have a great love for forests and biodiversity – I even studied with some of them. But if you advocate for nature preservation within the government now, you are taking an isolated position. It is impossible to stand up to the president and say no, that role is left to civil society.’

Nabiruma thinks the government is making a big mistake with its current choices. ‘I have never seen a country that has exploited its oil and gas in a sustainable way. It is always local communities that suffer, never the rich.

‘Look at Nigeria. When you see the Delta region, you dread to think about what happens if Uganda starts exporting oil and gas. The pollution, the high crime rate, the lower life expectancy of people living near the oil fields. 

‘Or Angola and Congo and all those repressive countries in West and Central Africa that export oil and gas – they are not rich, quite the contrary. It is really a false assumption that we will develop through oil and gas, even in the Netherlands.

‘Look at what has happened to you in Groningen: the environment and biodiversity are languishing, there are earthquakes… even scientists say you have to stop using fossil fuels. Skip that path and invest in the alternatives that are out there.’

According to her, especially Africa is on the verge of a green revolution. ‘Now we have the Uganda Green Growth Development Strategy, which describes that not oil and gas, but clean energy and agriculture, forestry and other sustainable economic activities have the potential to provide the biggest multiplier effect on our economy.’

Cooperation within the Green Livelihoods Alliance in Uganda

We end the conversation with the cooperation within the consortium in Uganda itself. Besides AFIEGO and ETA, the Green Livelihoods Alliance in Uganda is formed by Friends of Zoka, which fights for the protection of a large tropical forest in the north, and Action for Rural Women’s Empowerment (ARUWE), which focuses on strengthening female leadership.

Both stress that it is about much more than just work. Several times during the conversation, Diana Nabiruma took her conversation partner under her protection: ‘Richard, I don’t think it’s wise to have that written down,’ she then said. Working within GLA, which already began at the predecessor of Power of Voices, has led to a great friendship between the organisations. 

‘We complement each other so enormously well,’ says Nabiruma. ‘ARUWE makes sure gender is always on the radar as a transnational issue. ETA does research and provides information, AFIEGO works on lobbying and advocacy, and Friends of Zoka is good at building movements and mobilising the masses. 

‘In other words, we are complementary. I really have a soft spot for William and Henry, the forerunners of Friends of Zoka, because of the pain their work has also produced. I don’t think that soft spot will ever go away.’

‘We can’t live without each other,’ says Ssemmanda. ‘If one partner left, it would feel like the amputation of a leg… then you can no longer walk properly.’

He mentioned the Dutch embassy as an unofficial fifth partner of the alliance. ‘Those lines of communication are always short, and the embassy always supports us. In October 2021, six members of AFIEGO were arrested and detained at the police station for 72 hours. When they were released, people from the Dutch and US embassies were standing in front of the station to welcome them – that was an example of heartwarming solidarity.’

He pauses for a moment, then says: ‘It seems to me that some partnerships between civil organisations in Uganda are unhappy marriages between partners that were forced to go together, just to receive money from donors. They are not like us.’

Nabiruma laughs: ‘We have an extremely happy marriage, which will not end even if the funding from the Netherlands ever stops. GLA has given us a platform, a springboard to get everywhere.’

Vice Versa special

In a new special, journalistic platform Vice Versa wrote multiple articles about the work of the Green Livelihoods Alliance (GLA). The GLA is a collaboration of six NGOs, including IUCN NL, working for the sustainable and inclusive management of tropical forests, to combat deforestation, human rights violations and climate change, and to secure local livelihoods.

Other articles included in the special

• This is what the economy of the Amazon will look like