To turn schools into viable institutions/resources for promoting climatic change mitigation, environment conservation and sustainable development projects.

Climatic change, environmental and sustainable development has become so critical to the very survival of our population and the achievement of progress in other sectors including education. Environment is MDG 7.

In Uganda, climatic change has become a serious challenge to agriculture, health and economic development, all of which directly affect the quality of education of a developing country. In the agriculture sector for instance, we are witnessing increased food insecurity, prolonged draughts and high food prices. The rural population is getting poorer (as they lose their investments in agriculture to droughts) and finding it extremely hard to afford even the basic costs needed to sustain free education!

In spite of the central role that environment now plays in development and the challenges that Uganda is under going, environment issues have largely been an up scale debate leaving out the majority of the population who are victims, causers and beneficiaries of environmental conservation and climatic change. More over the 2010 Millennium Development Goals Report for Uganda indicates that the country is slow at integrating principles of sustainable development and reversing the loss of environmental resources and biodiversity.

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) talks about mainstreaming climatic change in development programmes. UMTA is embarking on a programme to mainstream climatic change and environmental conservation in the education sector and more specifically the school system. We believe that schools should play a practical role in reversing the climatic change and environmental degradation. Schools are part of the main victims of climatic change in terms of increasing food prices and the resultant students’ unrest. Schools are also part of the biggest wood energy consumers in the country. But schools are also feeling, first hand, the poverty of the parents and the increasing drop out of students. On the positive front, schools have the highest percentage of the active population of young people who can act as change agents. A good number of schools in Uganda have got big chunks of un -utilized land which can be used for tree farming and exploring alternative fuel sources.

UMTA is promoting green clubs in schools, encouraging green projects, promoting tree farming (by the schools, teachers, students – if every student in Uganda planted just 1 tree we would have added over two million trees, and parents). UMTA through its various forums sensitises and mobilizes the community to undertake environmental conservation. The Association seeks to down scale the environmental debate of adaptation, mitigation and emissions through a down to earth knowledge and communication programme which makes sense to the ordinary Ugandans. Additionally, the Association is working with partners to initiate school energy saving projects, aware of the fact that schools are currently the biggest consumers of wood/trees in the country. UMTA believes that schools being the major users of bio-fuel have a social responsibility to get involved in mitigating the dangers of environmental degradation.