The East Africa sub region had observed
increased direct environmental impacts,
which have been accelerated as a result of the pandemic. Instituted border
closure between countries in the sub region had a devastating impact on cross
border trade and in a way caused a spike in illegal timber trade through porous
border crossings. There was inadequate collaboration between forest agencies
and inadequate border patrols were conducted during the pandemic. For instance,
the legal trade between Kenya and Tanzania was stalled as no trucks were
allowed to enter the border in both countries. There were also other negative
forces to the environment that preceded Covid-19 such as climate-induced extreme
weather events like floods in Kenya, swarms of locusts that invaded northern
Kenya and large parts of Uganda and Southern Sudan, increased incidents of
forest fires, and damage by pests and diseases. The environmental impact was
huge due to low adaptation capabilities of the EAC member states and similarly
at community level.
Forest protections in Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda
and Tanzania were impacted as a result of lockdown such that inadequate forest
governance including surveillance activities were conducted by forest staff and
guards in state managed reserves. Silvicultural operations such as thinning and
pruning in plantations were suspended and deprioritized due to social
distancing. Some large private sector companies and medium landholders engaged
forest workers in small groups to keep the social distance as advised by the
health authorities. However, in some countries like Tanzania and Burundi, which
did not undertake total lockdown; small to medium landholding operations were
not affected directly by operational aspects but rather by declined demand due
the pandemic, hence forced to downsize their operations. Many of the field
operations such as tree planting and silvicultural activities that include
thinning, pruning, de-branching were in operation although with observance of
social distancing.
It was observed and reported in some countries in the East Africa, illegal harvesting activities were on rise by 20% from
the usual reported number of incidents, and all were associated with less
surveillance and patrol activities in the protected areas. The pandemic
affected much of the afforestation and planting activities. The pandemic happened at the peak planting
season and only 80 percent of the planted targets were reached and in late season times, and therefore
missing the country’s long term ambitious target of planting for restorations per their annual targets.
