WWF Launches a new project for Green jobs and Nature-based Solutions

Posted on 8 September 2021

The project will focus on jobs within restoration and in sectors that reduce pressure on important natural resources for climate resilience within the timber value chain; charcoal, bamboo and honey industries.

World Wide Fund for Nature has launched a new project on Innovative and Gender-sensitive Nature-based Solutions and Green Jobs. The four-years project aims at reducing the impacts of climate change and poverty on communities within the Rwenzori Landscape through Nature Based Solutions (Nbs) covering six (6) districts of; Kasese, Kaborole, Bunyangabo, Ntoroko, Bundibugyo and Rubirizi.

The project will focus on jobs within restoration and in sectors that reduce pressure on important natural resources for climate resilience within the timber value chain; charcoal, bamboo and honey industries.

According to WWF Uganda Country Director, David Duli, the project will create and scale green jobs by applying a Nature based Solutions (NbS) approach at a landscape level to harness nature's immense potential to provide for communities’ well-being, hereby enhancing their resilience to climate change.

WWF will partner with different players that include; Government, private sector, Civil Society Organisations, Public vocational training institutes among others.

According to the Coordinator for Energy, Climate change and Extractives at WWF, Yonah Turinayo, the project will adopt community driven NbS for climate change adaptation and mitigation in key ecosystems such as forests for water towers and areas of vegetation.

“We intend to adopt the community driven NbS which will raise awareness and capacitate the communities more prone to climate changes and in this way increase the individual and community level resilience. It will also use an innovative approach to incentivizing community management of natural resources and support the communities in restoration efforts” he said.

The project will also engage with private sector actors in valuing and financing the ecosystem services and this will yield multiple benefits including; reduced climate risk, improved food security and livelihood as well as reducing the most severe environmental impacts of climate related disasters, such as flooding, landslides, drought and the subsequent long-term impact of climate change.

The chosen area of implementation holds immense natural and socio-economic value – wealth of ecosystem services, such as water resources, carbon storage, forest resources, and regulation of the hydrological cycle, that generate benefits locally, nationally, and globally.

The Rwenzori Mountains are the main source of water across the Greater Virunga Landscape (GVL) – providing water to over 2 million people and supplying irrigation schemes, hydropower stations and domestic water supplies.

The project area is also dominated by a population which is highly climate fragile, combined with high levels of poverty (between 15 and 30% of the rural population) and is placing increasing pressure on natural resources.

For WWF, NbS for climate change are applied as ecosystem conservation, management and/or restoration interventions intentionally planned to deliver measurable positive climate adaptation and/or mitigation impacts, that have direct positive implications for human development and biodiversity. NbS is applied to achieve multiple societal co-benefits, enhancing a multitude of ecosystem goods and services, adding to people’s livelihoods, food and water security, and risk reduction etc thus improving socio-cultural conditions of communities.

WWF Senior Accountant, Arthur Muhwezi visiting the apiary project for one of the Ex-poacher groups in the Rwenzoris.