Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago has disclosed that his team has developed a policy on urban forests aimed at protecting green spaces in Kampala.
Speaking during the commemoration of #WorldCitiesDay21, Lukwago said that right now, Kampala does not have a single forest.
“We have enacted the green infrastructure ordinance to protect the green spaces in Kampala.
I have tasked the technical team to allocate us land of at least 5 acres to set up an urban forest,” said Lukwago.
He revealed that they did a tree audit and the results indicated that they have a rich biodiversity in Kampala.
“We have over 300 species of trees in Kampala alone. Unfortunately, we haven’t made deliberate efforts to protect them,” Lukwago said.
He added; “Every street in Kampala should have trees. Acacia Avenue had very big trees. However, we wanted to construct a double-lane road, and it was very hard for us to agree to cut these trees down.”
This year’s theme for World Cities Day is ‘Adapting Cities for Climate Resilience’ to aware people of the effects of climate-related disasters, such as floods, droughts, sea-level rise, heat waves, landslides, and storms on cities.