Expanding Our Impact Agenda Into Uganda
19 September, 2024 – We’re excited to announce the expansion of our impact agenda in East Africa with an ambitious long-term project in Uganda focusing on Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, a globally significant and richly biodiverse ecosystem.
Recognised as part of the Greater Virunga Landscape, Bwindi is home to more than half of the world’s mountain gorilla population and harbours over 1,000 unique species of flora and fauna, many of which exist nowhere else on Earth. It is also deeply tied to human history as the ancestral home of the Batwa people, a community whose cultural identity is intricately connected to the forest.
The National Park is well protected, and gorilla tourism is a well-documented conservation success story. However, the area around the park is heavily populated, leaving it an island of wilderness. The region's fertile land has led to intensive agriculture right up to the park's boundaries, leaving no room for the growth that a thriving ecosystem needs. Rural communities reliant on farming, such as the Bakiga, are driven into poverty as their population grows but the land available to them doesn’t. The indigenous knowledge and cultural practices of The Batwa diminishes with each generation without forested areas they can freely access.
Our experience has shown us how important it is to work with local communities to create buffer zones to safeguard and expand East Africa's critical ecosystems, and to improve the lives of those who live around them. In Uganda we are using this approach to support the creation of a new forest buffer zone adjacent to the national park, creating an area that allows wildlife populations to expand, a space for the Batwa to engage with their cultural traditions, and supporting new sustainable livelihood opportunities for the surrounding Bakiga community.
We are working closely with Change a Life Bwindi, a local NGO already making a difference to the Batwa and Bakiga communities. Successful schemes they have implemented include supporting former poachers to retrain as beekeepers, and providing disadvantaged women with skills in basket weaving and tailoring, allowing them to generate an income. By providing Change a Life Bwindi with stable, long-term funding and support, they are able to scale up their strategic, transformative work.
Our starting point for the project is the reforestation of 45 acres of depleted tea plantation on the park’s northern fringe, where our new lodge, Erebero Hills, is being constructed. The lodge’s name, meaning “a place where you can see far,” reflects its elevated location and broader vision for the region. Alongside Change a life Bwindi we have already planted 25,000 native trees in consultation with The Batwa, incorporating a biocultural approach that merges science with indigenous knowledge.
Erebero Hills, along with a new full DMC offering in Uganda and Rwanda, allows us not only to extend our services in East Africa, but also to apply our extensive experience in delivering large-scale impact to help safeguard and expand another of the world’s most vital ecosystems, enabling both the wildlife and people reliant on it the opportunity to grow and thrive.