The National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) has launched its Strategic Plan for the Financial Years 2025/26 to 2029/30, unveiling a sweeping five-year blueprint aimed at reversing decades of environmental degradation in one of Africa’s most ecologically diverse yet increasingly threatened nations.
The launch, held at the Sheraton Hotel in Kampala, brought together a high-profile audience of government representatives, development partners, foreign embassies, and non-governmental organisations, signalling the broad coalition that will be required to deliver on the plan’s ambitious targets.
A Nation at an Environmental Crossroads
The Strategic Plan arrives at a critical moment for Uganda’s environment. The statistics are sobering. Forest cover has plummeted from 24 percent approximately 4.9 million hectares, in 1990 to as low as 9 to 12 percent in recent years, a loss of more than three million hectares in just two and a half decades. Deforestation continues at an estimated rate of 50,000 hectares annually, contributing approximately 8.25 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions every year. If the trend continues, experts warn the country’s forests could be functionally depleted by 2040.
Wetlands, which once covered 15 percent of Uganda’s land area, have contracted sharply. Coverage has declined toward 8 percent in the most degraded parts of the country, even as Uganda’s wetlands all 8,613 of which have now been gazetted as protected critical ecosystems, continue to provide irreplaceable services: water purification, flood control, biodiversity habitat, and climate buffering. Wetland destruction currently costs the country approximately UGX 2 billion annually in direct losses, while contamination of water resources exacerbated by reduced wetland buffering costs the economy an additional UGX 38 billion each year.
Overall, more than 40 percent of Uganda’s land is considered degraded, with 12 percent in a severe state of degradation, driven by soil erosion, poor farming practices, overgrazing, and rapid urban expansion. The country’s population, currently estimated at 45 million and growing at a rate that projects 75 million people by 2040, places ever-increasing pressure on these already-strained ecosystems.
Climate change compounds the crisis. Average temperatures in Uganda have risen by 1.3°C over the past 50 years, with 2023 recorded as the warmest year since 1950. Droughts, flash floods, and erratic rainfall patterns are increasingly disrupting agriculture, the sector employing approximately 73 percent of the population, while glaciers on the Rwenzori Mountains continue to recede. Total greenhouse gas emissions have grown from 43,875 gigagrams of CO₂ equivalent in 1995 to over 112,000 gigagrams in 2019, with land use change and forestry accounting for the single largest share of those emissions.
What the Strategic Plan Sets Out to Do
It is against this backdrop that NEMA’s new Strategic Plan takes aim with specific, measurable targets. The plan’s strategic direction is built around five key priority areas:
1. Environmental Governance and Coordination; Strengthening the legal, institutional, and policy frameworks that govern how Uganda’s natural resources are managed, and ensuring that lead agencies at all levels of government are aligned toward common environmental outcomes.
2. Environmental Quality and Ecological Integrity; Reducing the extent of degraded wetlands, restoring forest landscapes, and maintaining the health of Uganda’s extraordinary biodiversity, which includes over 18,000 species, among them the iconic mountain gorilla, as well as 4,900 species of vascular plants and unique ecosystems ranging from savanna grasslands to tropical rainforests.
3. Environmental Education, Awareness, and Mainstreaming; Expanding the integration of environmental considerations among lead agencies and communities, ensuring that environmental stewardship is not the mandate of NEMA alone but is woven into national development planning, agriculture, infrastructure, and industry.
4. Compliance with Environmental Laws and Standards; Driving compliance rates up to 85 percent, a significant leap that will require intensified enforcement, enhanced Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) processes, and stronger deterrence against illegal activity in protected areas and wetlands.
5. Institutional Systems and Capacity; Equipping NEMA itself with the systems, technology, human resources, and financial capacity to deliver on its mandate effectively and sustainably.
Alongside these five pillars, the Strategic Plan integrates a suite of crosscutting issues that reflect Uganda’s broader development challenges: gender equity, climate change adaptation and mitigation, innovation and ICT, disability inclusion, anti-corruption measures, and HIV/AIDS responsiveness.
These are not peripheral additions; they are embedded throughout the plan’s implementation framework, recognising that environmental management cannot be separated from the social fabric in which it operates.
Enhancing Farmer Resilience and Reducing Emissions
Among the plan’s most consequential targets is its focus on enhancing farmer resilience to climate change. Uganda’s agriculture is overwhelmingly rain-fed and smallholder-driven, making it acutely vulnerable to the erratic weather patterns that climate change is intensifying. The Strategic Plan commits NEMA to scaling up climate-smart approaches, supporting farmers with better access to environmental information, and helping communities adapt to shifting rainfall seasons, prolonged droughts, and the increased frequency of extreme weather events.
On greenhouse gas emissions, the plan acknowledges Uganda’s paradox: though the country contributes less than 0.1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, it ranks among the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations. The plan commits to reducing emissions through a range of interventions including ecosystem restoration, sustainable land management, and supporting the country’s transition to renewable energy. Uganda’s electricity system is already over 90 percent hydropower-based, but widespread dependence on biomass for cooking and heating in rural areas continues to drive both emissions and deforestation.
A UGX 295 Billion Investment, With a Funding Gap to Bridge
Implementation of the Strategic Plan is projected to cost UGX 295 billion over the five-year period. The Government of Uganda has appropriated UGX 270 billion toward this goal, reflecting a strong institutional commitment to the plan. However, a funding gap of UGX 24 billion remains, which NEMA will need to mobilise through development partners, international climate financing mechanisms, and non-governmental stakeholders.
The presence of diplomatic missions and development partners at the launch underscores the importance of international cooperation in closing this gap. Uganda has demonstrated an ability to attract climate financing — the country has benefited from the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility, and bilateral support from Austria, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, and the European Union — and NEMA will need to leverage these relationships vigorously in the years ahead.
Anchored in Uganda’s Vision 2040 and NDP IV
The Strategic Plan is deliberately aligned with Uganda’s long-term national ambitions. It takes its direction from Uganda’s Vision 2040, which envisions a transformed, prosperous, and upper-middle-income country, and from the National Development Plan IV (NDP IV), which identifies environmental sustainability as foundational to economic resilience and growth.
NEMA was established in May 1995 as Uganda’s principal agency for coordinating, monitoring, regulating, and supervising environmental management. Over the past three decades, the authority has overseen the development of environmental policies, laws, regulations, standards, and guidelines. The new Strategic Plan represents the most comprehensive articulation yet of NEMA’s vision for the next chapter, one that must deliver not just regulatory compliance but genuine ecological recovery.
The plan also aligns with Uganda’s international commitments, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and Uganda’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) submitted in 2022. In May 2024, Uganda became the first African country to submit national biodiversity targets aligned with the Kunming-Montreal Framework, a milestone that reflects growing international recognition of Uganda’s environmental leadership. That recognition was further affirmed in October 2025, when Uganda received the prestigious Red NBSAP medal at the IUCN World Conservation Congress for outstanding commitment to evidence-based species recovery.
A Call to Collective Action
The Strategic Plan’s launch is both a declaration of intent and an invitation. Environmental recovery at the scale Uganda requires cannot be achieved by NEMA alone. It demands the active participation of local governments, the private sector, civil society, farming communities, and every Ugandan who draws their livelihoods and their lives from the land, the water, and the forests that remain.
The plan acknowledges that Uganda stands at a pivotal moment. The country’s biodiversity is still extraordinary its wetlands, forests, and savannas among the most globally significant. Its young, growing population represents both a challenge and an opportunity. The choices made over the next five years will determine whether Uganda can bend the arc of environmental decline and set itself on a path to the resilient, sustainable future that Vision 2040 envisions.
