Tree plantation.

The project focuses on boosting overlapping habitats management in River Katonga Catchment in Uganda as an intervention to heavy encroachment of communities on wetlands and forests and riverbanks in Mpigi, Butambala and Karungu District. The districts have unique geographic location with sensitive biological nature on a landscape. The unique nature is the confluence of R. Katonga and L. Victoria that could become most threatened.

This work builds on the previous project on “Overlapping Habitats Management in Downstream of River Katonga Catchment Uganda’’ which focused on raising community awareness on the hotspot in the overlapping habitats.

The project will work through the co-management teams to assess arrange ecological goods and services, social and cultural values, and economics as well as drivers of impacts on overlap habitats use, and management strategies. The generated information will be used in the design of the community monitoring tools and citizen science training as well as informing the grievance redress mechanism. The project will also use participatory approach and it will involve various stakeholders from the local communities, parishes, sub-counties, districts, ministry and departments, and agencies that are pertinent in the management of overlapping habitats. At the heart of the project, equality and diversity approach will form major part the implementation, to increase the project ownership. Further engagements with the landlord have been proposed to lobby for part of their land to increase the wetland buffer where species of environmental significance can be conserved and eventual voluntary specie conservation in the area.

These interventions are aimed at increasing community understanding of the species of high conservation in the catchment of River Katonga through citizen science and training, secondly, establishing critical habitat monitoring areas around the overlapping habitats based on the fauna species, thirdly, establishing community monitoring tool for the overlapping habitant management, and lastly strengthening grievance redress mechanism among the stakeholders within the overlapping habitat. These outcomes will be sustained through the establishment of overlapping habitat networks, and dual grievance redress mechanism in the project area.