Carbon Forum in Uganda

Carbon Forum have been applying their well-honed communications skills and striking out into what is certainly new territory for MEA with the successful completion of a recent project for the Ugandan Parliamentary Forum on Climate Change (PFCC).

 

The project came about as a result of the first CF project in Uganda, developing an exhibition on climate change for the National Museum in Kampala for the British High Commission earlier this year. The positive response and interest in the exhibition led to an enquiry from the Parliamentary Forum on Climate Change about us producing a display for the Parliament of Uganda, with funding provided again by the British High Commission. The display would feature a model landscape, showing two possible futures for Uganda based on best-case and worst-case scenarios for climate change impacts and responses.
 

 

One of the biggest challenges we faced when developing the museum exhibition was starting from a point of limited knowledge about Uganda and the issues and impacts that climate change is creating there. For this project Richard Hammerton, who built a similar display model for the exhibition, went out to Uganda for a month in order to research and develop the model.

 

We were extremely lucky to have an offer of support from the Uganda Carbon Bureau (UCB), based just outside the capital, Kampala. As well as letting Richard turn their garage into a temporary model-making studio, the UCB staff also turned out to be a source of expert knowledge on climate issues in Uganda, relevant technologies, the pros and cons of shade trees in tea plantations, handy local contacts and the best places to go for a good evening out.

 

After a few days of travelling around Kampala and the surrounding district for research the work of constructing the display began. As the schedule left a little over two weeks to complete the project it took many long days and some late nights to complete the job, and somehow time was found to fit in visits by art students from the International School and interviews with the press. All the hard work was justified by the end result as the display was very well received and generated a great deal of interest and positive responses, culminating in the official hand-over of the display to the Deputy Speaker by the British High Commissioner, Martin Shearman, at the well-attended launch event in Parliament.

 

Because of the success of this project and the museum exhibition, and with a heightened appreciation of the need for more widespread climate change awareness work there, Carbon Forum are now seeking opportunities for following this up with an even more ambitious project and strengthening our link with Uganda.