The Minister for Social Justice has been criticised after failing to deny that the Welsh Labour Government, through its Wales and Africa program, will not be displacing farmers from their land and using it to plant forests to offset Welsh Carbon emissions.
The Welsh Government has spent millions of pounds of taxpayers money planting trees in the Mt Elgon region of Mbale through its Size of Wales project, currently chaired by former First Minister Carwyn Jones.
Carbon colonialism is on the rise in Africa, and Uganda has a major issue with subsistence farmers being forcibly removed from their land to provide space for tree planting, that in turn can be used for the selling of carbon credits and offsetting carbon emissions of other countries.
Whilst promoting reforesting and sustainable farming practises, it appears that the project is designed with an ulterior motive, that of providing forests for the Welsh Government to offset its carbon emissions. When questioned by Conservative MS Joel James, the Welsh Minister failed to deny that the Welsh Government was planting the forest for this purpose.
The Welsh Labour Government’s policy of reforesting the entire Mt Elgon region with fruit, shade and fuel trees could call for the removal of local farmers who operate on deforested land. Mt Elgon is a site where considerable bamboo farming and processing takes place. Removing these farmers would not only impact livelihoods but the local culture who see bamboo as a local delicacy.
The Minister was pressed if she could confirm that the Welsh Labour Government, through its Wales and Africa program, will not be displacing farmers and using the forest planted in Uganda to offset Welsh Carbon emissions. She failed to deny that subsistence farmers who rely on the land to eat would be removed so that the project could meet its 30 million tree target by 2030 and simply ignored the question.
Commenting, Welsh Conservative Shadow Minister for Social Partnership, Joel James MS said:
“Yesterday’s response – or lack of response is highly worrying. This should have been very easy for the Minister to rule out if it was not going to use the Mt Elgon forest in Uganda to offset Welsh carbon emissions and the Welsh Labour Government weren’t going to be displacing Ugandan farmers in the process”.
“Jane Hutt’s lack response in the chamber just encapsulates the Welsh Governments approach to policy, they say one thing and do another or in this case, they ignore questioning all together.
“Carbon colonialism is a major concern and has a drastic effect on local farmers in Uganda. It’s high time the Welsh Labour Government stopped dodging questions and started providing some concrete answers.”