Assessing the effect of tenure security on the protection of wetlands.

Abstract

Wetland ecosystems have undergone extensive and intensive degradation and the services they provide to people are powerfully influenced by land use patterns and land resource tenure; and as such, well established control, ownership, and use rights are imperative for wetland conservation and sustainable use. Therefore, this study aimed at assessing the effect of tenure security on protection of wetlands in Uganda using Kinawataka wetland as the case study. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were applied while using simple random and purposive sampling techniques in selection of the respondents. Collected data was checked, coded and analyzed using; Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) and Microsoft Excel whereas Landsat images of years 2000, 2010 & 2022 of the study area obtained from USGS were analyzed by use of interactive supervised classification tool. The findings reveal that illegal access to Kinawataka wetland dominates for instance access to the wetland through purchase, squatting, inheritance and rental market accounts for 15.5%, 12.1%, 31% and 15.5% respectively compared to 25.9% of the wetland users with legally acceptable access to the wetland. Insecure wetland use rights have manifested in form of residential and industrial developments, agricultural improvements, solid and liquid waste disposal, drainage channel construction, and social infrastructure development within/around the wetland resulting into reduced wetland area, loss of socio-services and reduced vegetation cover i.e. there was a 16.7% & 12.29% vegetation loss for years 2000-2010 & 2010-2022 respectively. This has resulted into impairment of the ecological functions of the wetland such as deteriorated water quality, reduced flood storage potential and high degree of water level fluctuation. Therefore, the existing insecure wetland use rights has fueled wetland degradation, impairment of key ecological wetland functions, and loss of other socio-economic services within urban wetlands; however, wetlands and loss of their services can be halted through the issuance of approved Environmental Impact Assessment certificates for all land use activities within/around a wetland.