IVery few organisations survive long enough to celebrate nearly three decades of consistent impact. Remaining relevant for 27 years in conservation--through changing governments, shifting donor priorities, evolving climate realities and growing community needs--requires more than resilience.
It demands vision, innovation and an unwavering belief that people and nature can thrive together.
This year, the Environmental Conservation Trust of Uganda (ECOTRUST) marks 27 years of championing community-led conservation, landscape restoration and conservation finance.
From humble beginnings as a USAID grants management unit to becoming one of Uganda's leading conservation organisations, ECOTRUST has helped reshape how communities value nature--not merely as something to protect, but as an asset capable of improving livelihoods.
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Today, the organisation works with more than 54,000 smallholder households across five landscapes, supports the restoration and improved management of more than 70,000 hectares, has mobilised millions of dollars in conservation finance, pioneered biodiversity credits in Uganda and now aims to reach 16.5 million people while restoring another 60,000 hectares over the next five years.
For this edition of Green Exclusives, environmental journalist Joshua Kagoro sat down with ECOTRUST Executive Director Pauline Nantongo Kalunda to reflect on the organisation's remarkable journey, lessons learned over nearly three decades and the future of conservation in Uganda.
Twenty-seven years is a remarkable milestone. When you look back to 1999, what story best captures ECOTRUST's journey from where it started to where it stands today?
It has been an exciting journey. By the time ECOTRUST started, I was just joining the workforce. There were all these dreams.
ECOTRUST used to be a grants management unit of USAID. It was phasing out, but stakeholders requested that it should not be phased out. The fact that stakeholders asked for the unit to continue showed that it was already appreciated as a very important institution.
But when it was converted into a Ugandan organisation, it was exposed to the same dynamics that every Ugandan organisation faces.
It was transformed from a former USAID grants management unit into a Ugandan organisation, but without funding. It therefore had to go through the same challenges that all new organisations face--developing innovative ways of mobilising resources.
There were some good days because, as soon as we started, USAID gave us five million US dollars to begin operations. But that was it. After four years, the real work started, so to speak.
However, it has been an exciting journey because we have never gone out of business. Even when the initial funding ended, the organisation survived.
It could have gone out of business, but it never did because it was already built for resilience.
The structures, constitution and charter of the organisation were designed in a way that enabled it to thrive through both good and difficult times.
Over the years, the organisation has developed a resilient model based on landscape restoration as a business.
It is a model that is not dependent on one source of funding. It is driven by the market.
ECOTRUST was among the pioneer organisations that ventured into nature-based markets, supporting smallholder farmers to access carbon markets.
We have been participating in the carbon market for more than 25 years. The world has only recently awakened to carbon offsets and carbon markets as major tools for climate mitigation, but we have been doing this for more than two decades.
It was built as an organisation that is able to identify opportunities--unique opportunities that make nature investable.
The farmers, communities and partners we work with have remained with us for a very long time, regardless of the normal cycles of donor funding.
That journey has enabled us to develop a business model that can withstand shocks in financial markets, climate markets, nature markets, as well as changes in institutions and policies.
So, it is a resilient organisation.
Looking back over nearly three decades, what are the three milestones that make you most proud, and why do they matter for Uganda's environment and communities?
The three milestones come from innovation, impact and stewardship. From an innovation perspective, it is being able to develop a model that enables mobilisation of financing from both traditional and non-traditional sources.
We are able to access public and private philanthropy, but we also generate our own income as an organisation to the extent that we have established an endowment fund.
From a stewardship perspective, every dollar that we mobilise from donors enables us to mobilise at least six more dollars from the private sector. On top of that, we are able to generate two more dollars from internally generated revenue.
That model of stewardship is important. If you remember the story in the Bible about those who were given talents--those who invested and multiplied what they were given received more. That story of stewardship speaks to what we do.
But there is also the story of impact. We operate in five landscapes. Every landscape that we enter, we never leave. Over those 27 years, we have worked with about 54,000 households that we can track using GPS.
We can show you bare lands that have now been transformed into tropical high rain forests. That is the story of restoration.
Over the years, we have achieved verifiable emission reductions, with millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide sequestered by forests planted during our programmes.
The communities we work with have more than 200 businesses. Some are microfinance institutions, some produce and export honey, while others are involved in managing what we call shea parklands.
We are proud of our impact--the five landscapes, the carbon removed from the atmosphere as climate change mitigation, the households we work with and the community businesses we support.
Conservation has changed significantly over the years. How has ECOTRUST evolved to respond to challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and increasing pressure on natural resources?
The way we locate our projects or programmes is to optimise biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and livelihoods improvement.
Anywhere in Uganda where you operate, you should be able to generate climate benefits or livelihood benefits. In order to make the three objectives coincide, we locate our programmes in areas with high biodiversity value.
Our programmes are around Queen Elizabeth National Park, Rwenzori Mountains National Park, Murchison Falls National Park and the forests around these areas, Mount Elgon and its surrounding wetlands and forests, and, more recently, Northern Uganda.
What we do is work with communities and support them to enter into co-management arrangements with protected areas. We would like tree planting on private land to also contribute to reducing pressure on specific protected areas.
So, we develop a vision with the community that clearly defines what the impact on the protected area will be, as well as the contribution that will come from private land. Our model is based on the understanding that development does not have to compete with conservation.
What we do is make nature investable. We develop a business case for a smallholder farmer, for example, to see trees as an economically viable land-use option that can compete with activities such as sugarcane growing.
That is the model we have developed. We identify or create multiple opportunities for income generation. Every farmer we work with has a land-use plan, which also doubles as a business plan.
Within that land-use plan, the farmer has a management objective for the trees.
They are not growing trees because they are trying to save the world. They are growing trees because they are producing something--whether medicinal extracts, fruits, fuel, timber or products from apiaries.
That alone creates economic value. However, the major barrier is the investment horizon. Whereas it takes about three months to grow beans and recover your money, it takes 10 or 15 years to benefit from a tree.
What we do is help farmers develop models with multiple management objectives, where different sources of income come in at different stages of the enterprise.
ECOTRUST has become a pioneer in conservation finance and carbon programmes. How have these approaches transformed the lives of rural communities while protecting ecosystems?
One of the ways we do this is by putting a value on environmental services. The same farmer who is growing a tree for the production of avocados or mangoes is also growing a tree that absorbs carbon dioxide.
That same tree is stabilising soils and producing watershed services. The tree is also providing habitat for biodiversity and therefore producing biodiversity services.
One of our innovations is putting a monetary value on the services provided by the farmer. We put a monetary value on climate regulation services through the carbon certification route. We put a monetary value on conservation by creating what we call biodiversity credits.
We also put a monetary value on watershed services derived from the presence of trees on farms. Those services are linked to companies, mainly in Europe and the United States, that have committed to achieving net-zero impact on the environment.
Every year, these organisations assess their environmental footprint, invest in initiatives that reduce that impact and then put a monetary value on any remaining impact.
On our side, we have a database of farmers implementing different activities as part of their livelihood strategies. We quantify the environmental services generated from their work and connect the farmers to companies.
That is how we create a link between communities protecting nature and companies seeking to support environmental solutions.
Is it sustainable? Extremely sustainable.
When a farmer designs their own land-use plan, they are building resilience. Trees are very important in building the resilience of productive systems. Look at farms where trees exist. They are usually better able to withstand droughts and excessive rainfall because soils are stabilised, runoff is reduced and moisture retention improves.
Some of these trees are nitrogen fixers, meaning farmers benefit from improved productivity of their land. Remember, these trees provide services for 25 years. What other enterprise do we have where you invest once and productivity continues for at least 25 years?
So, it is sustainable. It builds the resilience of the farmer, but as the farmer builds their own resilience, they are also providing a service to the rest of the world.
We are simply enabling the farmer to monetise that additional service.
Communities are often described as the first line of defence for nature. From your experience, what have local people taught ECOTRUST about conservation that textbooks never could?
The stories of farmers who work with us are not different from what I am saying.
You should go and visit them. These are farmers who have completely changed their investment horizons. They are no longer thinking only in terms of short-term gains. They are thinking in terms of return on investment.
Most smallholder farmers have an investment horizon of about three months. You plant, harvest, sell and prepare for the next season. It normally does not go beyond that.
But for a farmer to sit down and say, "This is the land use I am going to have for the next 25 or 35 years," that is not a simple transformation.
Changing your planning horizon from three months to 35 years is a major achievement.
Farmers have built schools. Farmers have moved from never saving to creating groups where they own and manage their own financial systems. Some groups use carbon payments as collateral for loan financing.
Some have bought land and constructed clinics where members have access to healthcare. Even the government is trying to develop insurance products for everyone, but here we have farmers who have created their own systems.
It is a transformational programme. When we started our tree-planting programme, it was mainly focused on native trees--Musizi, Musambya, Mvule and other Ugandan species.
At that time, there was very little literature in Uganda on how to grow these trees because they were mainly found naturally in forests.
The available literature focused on managing forests, not growing these trees. Farmers helped generate knowledge on how these species could be raised. By the time we were five years into the programme, farmers had developed systems for experimenting with more than 20 different Ugandan tree species.
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They taught us how to raise those trees. There are also indigenous knowledge systems. Farmers have ecological indicators. They know that when certain ants appear, it means rain is coming.
They understand signs about the health of habitats that are not necessarily written in books.
There is so much that farmers have taught us.
Uganda continues to face deforestation, wetland degradation, pollution and climate-related disasters. From your perspective, what is the current state of our environment, and what concerns you the most?
What concerns me most is that while the people who are on the frontline of environmental disasters and suffering are investing so much in trying to protect nature, the rest of us are often the ones causing the problem.
Those of us in Kampala use polythene bags, clog waterways, drive cars, run industries, grab land, convert forests into sugarcane plantations and build in wetlands.
Yet we continue thinking that local communities need a mindset change. We waste a lot of resources. Uganda's National Development Plans clearly show that we are a nature-dependent economy.
But our approach is not to manage nature as an asset. We manage it as a source of raw materials.
That lack of realisation that these resources are not infinite--that we need to treat them as assets we invest in--is what concerns me.
When you have a house that gives you rental income, you repair it, maintain it and make it attractive for the next tenant.
But the way we deal with nature is different. We extract, destroy and move on to the next resource.
We need to start treating nature as the asset it is.
Despite the challenges, where do you see hope? Are there encouraging trends or success stories that convince you Uganda can still reverse environmental degradation?
Yes, we can reverse environmental degradation. We are not in the worst position. We have a very good location.We are located around the equator, and we do not need too much to restore nature.
Many wetlands do not even require active restoration. If you remove the barriers and challenges, they can recover. It is not just a slogan that Uganda is gifted by nature. We are actually gifted by nature.
We are located at the centre of Africa. We have biomes characteristic of Sudan and Guinea. We have habitats characteristic of West Africa, East Africa and Southern Africa.There are species whose southernmost or northernmost ranges reach Uganda.
Our soils and ecosystems have enormous potential. We bought a piece of land in the Rwenzori Mountains in 2001. It was a cattle farm.
We developed a management plan and fundraising strategy. When we returned in 2006, the fundraising strategy was almost unnecessary because the land had already naturally converted back into a forest without major investment.
We only removed exotic trees that had been planted when it was a cattle farm, and the area recovered naturally. So there is hope. If we have commitment and proper planning, recovery is possible.
