Palm Project Accused of Environmental Destruction

Kambala is a privately owned public organization whose intent in Uganda was to lower their dependence on imported vegetable oil. There thoughts on this proposed plan is that it would give a large amount of jobs to people and cheapen the cost of vegetable oil for Uganda's consumers. These thoughts were turned into facts but the other fact that was overlooked was the environmental harm that would be inflicted on the rain forests that were cut down to grow palm trees for the oil. 7000 hectares of rain forest was cut down to make room for the palm trees. the government signed away that amount of land in return for a 10% profit. However, the project is in legal trouble due to violating the countries terms of environmental regulations and polluting the lake with fertilizers from the lake and other various types of chemicals. A report stated that "The clearing of forests in phases as stated in the Environmental Impact Assessment is not being followed. Large pieces of land are cleared at once. Exposure of soils to direct solar radiation and erratic rainfall are leading to soil erosion and siltation of the Lake Victoria's streams and rivers. As a result of clearing the forest cover, the soils have been exposed to soil erosion and land degradation," the report said.(Palm Project Accused of Environmental Destruction) The project is now being investigated and on hold due to The World Bank until safer methods for the extraction of palm oil can be found.

It's great tofinally have an organization or something such as the world bank step in when they see that true harm to our planet is being done. It truly shows that there is hope in the future for other things that go environmentally aray can be be fixed or at least looked into. However, Kambala is somewhat innocent in this situation because there government signed away on the dotted line without looking at their own environmental rules and regulations. In the end greed got the better of the situation due to the government wanting 10% of the palm oil profit.

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