Forest Plantation in Uganda

Context

The EIB-financed "Namwasa Plantation" project in Uganda is carried out by NFC (New Forests Company) Ltd and has two main objectives:

• Establishing a sustainable commercial plantation of eucalyptus and pine on degraded forest land, thereby creating large employment opportunities and helping alleviate poverty in the surrounding rural areas by an extensive community development programme;
• Supporting biodiversity: in addition to the plantation, part of the concession area will be left for Assisted Natural Regeneration including the plantation of local species and the creation of a fauna protected area.

Through the project fast-growing trees for harvesting are planted and sold as poles and round log. Namwasa is the first plantation of NFC, where the company planted about 6,544 ha until 2010 (approximately 3900 ha with pine and 2600 ha with eucalyptus). The total area owned by the company is approximately 8900 ha. Planting new trees started in 2006. The plantation includes the construction of buildings, forest roads and paths, nurseries etc.

EO Contribution

The purpose of the EOEuropa project is to demonstrate the utility of currently available EO data and EO-derived information products in monitoring the progress and status of forest replanting and the state of the forests (including effects of protective measures) outside the plantation areas. Land cover, land cover change and forest health index maps are produced over a 517 km2 area around the Namwasa plantation of the NFC plantation project, for the period before plantation started (2005) and recently (2011).