DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION, ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY AND DEVELOPMENT: WHAT THE YOUTH FACE IN FUTURE

 

By F.C OWEYEGHA-AFUNADUULA

Zoology Department

Makerere University

Kampala , Uganda .

 

Website: http://www.afuna.org or http://www.afuna.o-f.com

Email:afunaduula2000@yahoo.co.uk or afunaduula@afuna.org

Tel: +256 78 555 222 or +256 71 845461

 

 

25 th April, 2005

 

 

This Paper was presented under the auspices of Integrated Environmental Concerns (IEC) in a Seminar organized by the Uganda National Students Association (UNSA) in conjunction with the Save Environment Students Association of Makerere University (SESAMU), Kampala, Uganda and held at Kitante High School, Kampala in preparation for the 5 th June 1994 World Environmental Day Celebrations. The paper was published in The Uganda Student Volume 4 (August 1994): p. 6-10. It is reintroduced here, in a slightly different version, to widen and help the democratization process that the Political Parties and Uganda must brace themselves to undergo if they are to fit in the 21 st Century as significant components of our global environment, which is dominated by the youth. The author believes that our political parties (even movements, whether social, political or environmental) and, therefore, governance in its widest sense, remain orthodox and buried deep in the 20 th Century. According to him it is business as usual: transplanting the past into the future and using past strategies to confront today's environmentally complex problems, issues and challenges of development (democratic, political, social, cultural, intellectual, economic, spiritual, etc).

 

The author currently lectures Conservation Biology, Environmental Science, Natural resources Law and Issues in Environment in the Faculty of Science and Environmental Planning and Managements in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Makerere University. He is a Member of the Policy Committee of the Makerere University Interdisciplinary Teaching of Human Rights, Peace and Ethics Project. He has done a lot to promote integrated and interdisciplinary education in Uganda . He is Deputy Coordinator, Save Bujagali Crusade (SBC) and Secretary, National Association of Professional Environmentalists (NAPE).

 

  BACKGROUND

  To many people Nature exists outside themselves. It is a thing, changeless and stable. However, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, is that Nature is not a thing at all and constantly changes and is, therefore, dynamic.

Most changes in Nature are not eventful but occur very slowly, gradually and take far longer than one's human lifetime. Quite often we are not aware of them until very late. What we are aware of are events such as drought, wars, epidemics, political upheavals and social violence. And when we express concern about the human environment, like we are going to do on the World Environment Day on the 5 th June, it is often such events and their effects on the environment that we use as the yardstick to convince others to join the crusade for environmental sanity nationally, regionally and globally.

Our Planet Earth is an integral part of Nature and the theatre upon which all type and manner of environmental phenomena of immediate and long-term concern to us take place. We and our biocultural diversity constitute a dimension of Nature and what happens in our dimension affects other dimensions and vice versa.

Today it is common talk that all mankind (humankind) belongs to mother Earth as people of one family; that the Earth is becoming smaller and smaller as a result of improved communications and accelerating environmental destruction that is forcing the expanding human population that jumped the 5.5 billion mark in the last decade onto diminishing land resources; and that our Earth is in effect a small village.

There is real concern about the capacity of mother Earth to sustain biological and biocultural diversity in future.

It no longer makes sense to demarcate humankind in this village along ritual cleavage lines. It no longer makes sense to promote ultranationalist tendencies although being too liberal can be a threat to ethno- and cultural diversity as the vulnerable can disappear from the face of the Earth. It really no longer makes sense to exploit one man by another or to perpetuate a “man eat man society” in this small village of peoples who in fact form one family. It no longer makes sense to push for ever greater resources -which is erroneously called progress -and which in the end is political power at the expense of others.

We often hear politicians calling upon the poor to conquer nature to free themselves from the bondage of poverty. But what this means is that we diminish the probability of small inconveniences at the cost of increasing the probability of very large disasters. The conquest (of Nature) really means manipulation of the physical environment with little or no ecological or environmental conception.

Development (in reality) means respect for human rights and the basic rights of the community to which one belongs and access to necessary resources for growth. It is not only fundamentally right but a basic human need, which fulfills the aspirations (of people) to achieve the greatest possible freedom and dignity both as members of society and as individuals.

The right to democracy, a wholesome environment and development is an inalienable right for every person irrespective of age, sex or station. Environmental abuse leads to health and developmental problems that may be so difficult to find a solution to and become a constant threat to our global village and its occupants. Today, for example, we are being impacted by dirty water-based environmental diseases (tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, diarrhea, anthrax and food poisoning) whose symptoms are difficult to separate from those of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Of great environmental concern as we celebrate the World Environmental Day is that governments continue to be erected and dismantled through the barrel of the gun, on each occasion in the name of democracy. Military regimes have become a political tradition in Latin America, predominate in Africa and are commonplace in the Middle East . Unfortunately each government change brings in focus increasingly complex environmental crisis phenomena such as food crises, firewood energy crises, human displacements, debt spiral, secondary illiteracy and ignorance, environmental bankruptcy of the political leadership, poverty and overall economic decline, among others.

The belief these days that power must surely flow from the barrel of the gun instead of the will of the people is a constraint to the democratization of our global village. This is not being helped by the trend to militarize the minds of the young by taking advantage of their natural militaristic instincts, as we equate military security with national security and ignore the supremacy of environmental security. What actually will our children inherit?

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC DEMOCRATIZATION

  Political democratization and economic democratization are a must in the underdeveloped world. There can be no meaningful progress towards sustainable livelihoods in a sustainable environment without equal emphasis on both at the same time.

As I have attempted to demonstrate above, civil conflicts and consequently environmental damage increase as political freedoms decrease. Any help -whether military, humanitarian or developmental -which serves to strengthen authoritarian political leadership contributes to the abuse of democracy, maintenance of a cycle of violence and environmental bankruptcy and encroachment on civil rights.

Political democratization without economic democratization is useless. Economic democratization is necessary to ensure just distribution of economic power, primarily through broad participation and consent of the people in decisions regarding their areas and protection of their right to development. However, participation, which involves integration of perceptions, conceptions, actions, interpretations, understanding and wisdom, should not be confused with mobilization, which is the mere use of others to achieve own goals. So often, unfortunately, politicians and others conveniently use the two terms interchangeably and get away with it, thereby contributing to the increasing marginalization of our people from the development process (including political development).

NEW ERA OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE

With the current direction and militarization of our environment in our small village (the globe) the era we have entered is new in human experience in that for the first time in human history, Man, Homo sapiens, now has the capacity to alter the environment on a global scale within the span of a single generation. Locally, the manifestation of such capacity can be extremely disastrous. Liberia, Somalia and Rwanda provide living example of the countries that have fallen apart; environmental insecurity at its worst (Note: Somalia, Rwanda and Liberia have since taken steps to escape total disintegration, while others like Uganda are threatened by decay and collapse).

THE DILEMMA FOR UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES

  The concern about environmental security is now real. Today the critical issues of environment and development are not, surprisingly, being considered against the background dominated by the following system of themes: interdependence, interconnectivity, coexistence, sustainability, equity, rights, security and futures. The concept that development plans should be not only environmentally viable but also environmentally sound is increasingly gaining acceptance, thanks to a forceful environmental social movement.

The dilemma facing the underdeveloped world (of which Uganda is an integral part and the fourth poorest and most incapable of meeting the social development of its people) is choosing between growth and development quality. It is unfashionable these days to conceive growth in total disregard of the environment.

Unfortunately it is the poorest countries, which most lack the technical and financial resources to protect their environmental and ecological basis of survival and the future economic development and environmental security for their children. It is the poor within these countries who, compelled by their diminishing environment and aspirations, are streaming in ever increasing numbers to the slums and squatter areas in and around major settlements. The towns and cities are in a big measure more or less transplanted villages, where human rights violations and environmental abuses of all types are common but may go unreported, sometimes purposely, to hide the truth from the public.

In Uganda a new cycle of cause and effect dominated by illiteracy, poverty, ignorance, environmental decay and collapse, disease and social violence is manifesting in the slum areas as well as in the rural areas at a rate never before experienced in modern times, threatening further and further our environmental basis of survival. The ability of government to deal with the cruel cycle of environmental decay and collapse, whatever politicians want us to believe, is increasingly declining. It is not surprising that in such a situation governments everywhere on the globe divert attention to politics per se and development of measures to contain discontent, usually by encroaching on the human rights of the people such as the right to choose how and with whom to associate. This, unfortunately, only sows new seeds for social violence and environmental collapse sooner than later.

An important measure of human rights is access to adequate living conditions; that is, a healthy environment, which can provide for basic human needs and their development. These rights are linked to a set of responsibilities towards the environment and its use on an expanding but sustainable basis. Such rights demand that participation of the people and at all levels of society in decisions that affect the environment is promoted in order to transform these rights and responsibilities into realities.

DEMOCRACY, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

  In a way, we are talking about the close link between democracy, environment and development. Few people ever perceive any relationship between these three. Yet such perception is vital if we are to appreciate what is happening in our global village, particularly in the underdeveloped world.

Talk of human rights immediately calls for an examination of the democratic process in a given part of our global village and how strains and stresses in it are constraining the environmental and ecological basis of development. Where there are environmental risks, there are increasing incidences of poor mental health, economic insecurity, social insecurity and hence development with destruction. This precipitates a situation whereby discontent among the people is very high. In an attempt to maintain what is narrowly perceived as national security, which is actually an aspect of environmental security, a government misappropriates financial resources to build an oppressive military machine to confront supposed destructive elements threatening State security.

What actually such government is doing is to confront environmental perturbation that may often incorporate human beings with military gear without dealing with the real cause. This only leads to further ecological and environmental risks, increasing frequency of natural disasters such as drought and hunger, floods and even earthquakes! There is also social collapse and exploding settlements as human rights violations ignite environmental refugee exodus and further environmental decay and risks. Coups, political murders and social violence become an environmental menace, making any talk of peace and security an illusion.

Democracy and development are the birthright of everyone -young and old, woman and man, rich and poor. Democracy and development are also necessary for environmental security, ecojustice and inclusive and recognized participation of every human being in the process of societal change in our global village.

Democracy, environment and development are so inextricably linked that it would be wishful thinking to talk about one Earth, one family without reference to this truism. There can be no democracy and development in a depreciated environment. A depreciated environment is itself a product of maldevelopment. Maldevelopment reflects undemocratic political, economic and social processes at play. It is the lack of a healthy, safe and wholesome environment, which breeds discontent, disinterest in the political culture and process, social and political unrest, human rights violations, military conflicts, environmental refugees (even in form of dead bodies) within and between countries.

Development is much more than continuous increases in the leading economic indicators that politicians and economists so often quote to convince the members of our family that progress is taking place. It is a many-faceted concept, which encompasses the whole human being in all the aspects of her or his basic rights -be they intellectual, academic, economic, social, cultural, civic or political.

Repayment of debts is anti-development. It means that we divert resources away from meeting the needs of our people to meet the needs of foreign consumers and businesses. This denies the people of the underdeveloped world the right to democracy and development. Uganda , for example, is allocating only 1.3% of its Gross National Product (GNP) on education and only 2.5% on health. There is a likelihood that government will now bow (it actually has) to World Bank pressure to institute cost-sharing in education and health. This will turn government into a spectator as the increasingly impoverished Ugandans struggle not only to pay taxes to meet government's debt repayment obligations but also to meet the education and health needs of their households so as to get some rudimentary social development that is being denied to them.

More debt cannot be the answer for existing debt. It can only serve as a further burdening of the already burdened poor. It is a precursor for widespread poverty, environmental collapse, disasters (such as drought and hunger), social violence and an uncertain future in a world of interdependence. It is, therefore, a threat to the one Earth, one family ideal.

As far as Uganda is concerned, debt has taken the place of military conquest and occupation or religious conversions. It is now the effective instrument the North is using to economically, politically and socially control the country. It is thus a new form of neocolonial domination, using self-made Ugandan leaders as the agents in this plot. In essence in Uganda today we are experiencing the revival of the colonial econom.

Debt creation and sustenance is unfortunately being called aid. Aid is being channeled through the government and goes through the powerful and hardly reaches the powerless. All it is doing is to strengthen government control of national resources and weaken its accountability to the people. It is even giving government the card to legitimate existing power reactions that came into being in 1986 and to set the rules for and ultimately control the outcome of all other competitions –including competition for political office.

The costs of losing power in underdeveloped countries becomes unthinkable hence the tendency to manipulate the political environment in such a way that the people lose political rights and become so politically socialized as to feel that they are participating in the political process and culture. This of course is creating a lot of injustice and making it imperative that the military centrally politically controls and sustains social order among the masses. So, “the wise ruler” gives the military special treatment in the allocation of patronage resources at the expense of social and environmental development. This is so frequently wrongly referred to as “being in control of the army”. Those rulers who refuse to subjugate social development to military development are regarded as failures and stand the unfortunate possibility of being violently removed from power.

We have many countries where over-militarization and over-allocation of resources for the purpose have collapsed, thereby causing perturbations in our global environment.

This implies that unless we reduce our overdependence on militarization to secure narrow “national security”, which equates to military security for the rulers instead of the wider, more important environmental security, then we can forget about political stability or security in its widest sense for that matter. It means we must continue to destroy our selves in the name of ensuring security; that is preserving the rulers and all that they crave for, which may have, and in most cases has, nothing to do with the aggregate aspirations of our people. We can then forget real development, which is holistic change in the quality of the livelihoods of our people in a holistically healthy, safe and clean environment in all its dimensions and across them (the ecological-biological, the socio-economic, the socio-cultural and time dimensions) and in an integrated manner..

ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS

  While we have accepted that we belong to one Earth and one family, we have in reality left intact structures that negate this and even perfected them. This discussion would be incomplete without mentioning that current trade relations between the underdeveloped world and the developed world are an anti-thesis of democracy, development and environment.

In Uganda , for example, the National Resistance Movement/Army (NRM/A) leadership of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has not been able to empower people. Power is still in the hands of a few: the political elite or the political establishment -in reality a politico-military fraud driven by the lie of “liberation from undemocratic forces”.

The NRM/A, more than any other political entity in Uganda, has successfully institutionalized and popularized the great lie (belief) that power has been and is being widely dispersed in the hands of the people. Yet under the individual merit approach to governance (which is really individualization of society) what is happening is that society is being subjugated to individuals, specifically those who, with the help of the State or through their own capacity to take advantage of the corrupt politico-military governance of the country, manage to acquire political or economic advantage over the absolute majority. The absolute majority are then being politically socialized into believing that they are not only participating in the governance of the country but in fact have power.

Attitudes and beliefs about the political system are being established by fostering certain values and increasing either support for or alienation from the political system. There is a limited development strategy to satisfy the primary needs of the people, including a healthy environment and true participation and freedom of choice. The official belief is that democracy (the democracy of the rulers) is expensive and any price must be paid to achieve it. This explains why where wisdom would dictate against channeling environmental resources into a certain undertaking beyond the capacity of the poor country to bear, the rulers have enforced it, of course to the detriment of the country and its people (Note: Bujagali dam and The referendum have become best examples).

Accordingly there is little or no effort to meaningfully politically socialize our poorest of the poor in the sense of being in charge of their lives, environment and destiny. So they continue to be pushed to the limits of Nature where they are just etching a living. Sincerely speaking they are becoming more and more marginalized from both the development and political processes and are losing their environment to foreigners.

Independence , therefore, has meant that they are eventually losing their destiny, sovereignty, identity and future. They are at the mercy of Nature whose capacity to shield them against its vicissitudes is fast declining accompanied or occasioned by mushrooming environmental costs. Meanwhile environmental resources are being allocated to ameliorating environmental costs on more or less a continuing basis, with little evidence that true development may soon begin to take place.

  POVERTY: THE ANTI-THESIS OF THE ONE EARTH ONE FAMILY CONCEPT

  It is true that the next 20 to 30 years will be dominated by education and environment. These will be years of accelerating environmental degradation. Education-wise, the merits and demerits of disciplinary education will BE increasingly intellectualized upon. There will also be a resurgence of interest in integrated and interdisciplinary education at our colleges and universities of higher education. However, simultaneously policies are likely to be hatched institutionally and nationally to re-entrench the divisions of knowledge and separation of the sciences (hard and soft). Science itself is likely, as a consequence, to be pursued more and more as a value-free human enterprise, thereby playing the role of dehumanizing and denaturizing human endeavors in education practice to the detriment of our future generations of learners and teachers.

Poverty too will be on the rise and simultaneously with it underdevelopment will proliferate in our poor countries. In fact poverty is likely to prove to be the greatest of the greatest of the polluters and sources of destruction of our environment.

Apparently it is not only material, financial, income or monetary poverty we are concerned with here. True, these are familiar forms of poverty, but in African culture, they seem to be foreign in our environment. We also mean intellectual, biological, social, cultural, moral, spiritual, political and ethical forms of poverty, which unfortunately the current philosophy of development that emphasizes materialism and money ignores and yet they are of great threat to our survival. When we talk of impoverishment, we really mean it in its widest sense, which includes these different forms of poverty. Unfortunately current development practice and strategies to deal with poverty target material, income and monetary forms of poverty

Consequently, as development, as conventionally pursued to accumulate money, material wealth and services, continues these meaningful forms of poverty are increasing. The negative influences are there for all to see -loneliness, cultural emptiness, moral decay, ethical decay, spiritual void and lack of political development and democracy. Many are confused and asking, “Where exactly are we headed for?” Together the different forms of poverty constitute environmental poverty.

Unfortunately and perhaps unsurprisingly, although to the people of the underdeveloped world poverty is a real social and political issue, to the West this is not so. The 1988 and 1989 Edition of the World Development Report of the World Bank did not mention poverty. What, in my view, this means is that the World Bank and its close ally, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), do not see the issue of poverty as particularly central to global economic and monetary policies.

If, therefore, recently the World Bank and IMF have enriched their vocabulary with the terms “poverty eradication” or “poverty reduction”, it may be a whitewash of monetarist or econoministic policies to convince the poor that the two institutions care about poverty. We still see the poor countries being pressurized by the two global institutions to follow to the letter the economic and environmental blueprints of these institutions ostensibly to solve the economic and environmental ills of the poor. Frequently the solutions they prescribe become the new problems in environment and development.

What poverty is doing is to deny the majority of our people justice, sustainable livelihoods and inclusive development, while imported economic policies do not give priority to the development of domestic resources to meet domestic needs but give increasing focus of attention on foreign financial resources in form of loans. Such focus is anti-self-reliance and suffocates the vital resources of creativity, initiative, innovation and imagination among our people.

The more loans and foreign investment leaders in the poor countries accept, the greater the obligations the people incur for repayment -in foreign currency. Apparently it is as if the present generation leaders decide to borrow so that the future generations can repay.

Meeting loan repayments, however, depends on the generation of foreign exchange through exports, which is increasingly becoming difficult, and is instead being replaced by ever-rising environmental decline and social upheavals.

For us in Uganda our export earnings continue to be heavily dependent on exporting our environmental resources (natural capital) at bargain basement prices despite increasing awareness of the environmental consequences of continuing this way. The World Bank -undoubtedly the key economic player in the poor countries –unfortunately applies double standards to deal with the ensuing economic and environmental repercussions of the current trade relations.

On the one hand it has given us the much-hated economic blueprint called structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), whose primary objective seems to be acceleration of the export of environmental resources to the West through growth-led development strategies. On the other hand it has given us the so-called National Environment Action Plans (NEAPs), which is expected to culminate into a legislatively generated National Environment Management Act and a National Environment Management Authority (NEMA).

The NEAPs idea, unfortunately, does not go far enough to show that the North is ready to ensure that our environmental resources are carefully protected or sustainably used in the development process. Instead, being dependent on land infusions, it presents the real danger of having the environment possessed by the West in future.

There is no assurance that with NEAPs or NEMA thereafter, the prices of environmental goods will be maintained at high levels to sustain livable conditions and prevent poverty effects on the environment.

The reality is that at no time in the history of humanity have democracy, development and environmental security been so severely threatened or severed from each other as today, whatever the disciples of NEAPs may want us to believe. The predominant owners of the World Bank - the West -have not reduced their consumerism and profugrancy. Nor have they shown any sign that they are about to reduce these. They are, therefore, contradicting the concept of One Earth, One Family, which, like the many other concepts that have guided economic and environmental action, they themselves gave to humankind.

It is very likely that as our global village gets smaller and smaller and as humankind accepts the virtue of One Earth, One Family, international trade and investment policies that transfer environmental costs of consumption and capital accumulation from the North to the South will be more aggressively sold by the North and implemented by environmentally illiterate and bankrupt leaders in the South. We must expect newer intellectual innovations from the West to be brought forth to be sold to the leaders of the poor countries, who will ignore the knowledge and wisdom of their own local intellectuals and marginalize them from the development process.

We should, therefore, not be surprised if such leaders consciously or unconsciously multiply imports of junk (pollution) in form of plastics, secondhand vehicles, secondhand clothes, secondhand machinery and toxic wastes despite putting in place attractive environmental legislation. This in a way will be like selling the environments of their countries to the West and other countries for use to resolve their own environmental pollution problems.

Without durable and sustainable economic development in the poor regions of the world, there is indeed a real danger to international peace and security and to world economic growth and development towards the 21 st Century. The peace and security that are meaningful globally, regionally and nationally are environmental peace and environmental security. Therefore, there is need to use environmental means to achieve peace and security, and not the often preferred military means. The youth have the challenge to become agents of the environmental means of ensuring peace and security and to demystify the military means. If they do not then their future is in jeopardy because the military means will only continue to reduce the capacity of their environment to be secure and peaceful and, therefore, security and peace-imparting. .

CONCLUSION

  The ideal of One Earth, One family is a good rallying cry phrase for use in our crusade for environmental sanity. Unfortunately as we celebrate The World Environment Day it still takes ecological disasters or tragedies such as drought or mass destruction of human life by Homo sapiens, as did happen in Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Liberia or is happening in Northern Uganda, to propel countries in the poor regions of the world beyond awareness and concern to action to prevent further environmental decay and collapse.

There is need to see such environmental phenomena from a broader perspective as “the manifestation of the fragile nature of the socio-economic and socio-political structures

of the poor countries”. Trees we must plant but planting trees can easily be used to narrow environmental concerns and actions in the ecological-biological dimension of the environment, thereby ignoring the more dynamic socio-economic and socio-cultural dimensions as well as the need to use time judiciously as both a resource and measure to ensure environmental peace and security without which development, democracy and respect for human rights become remote possibilities.

It is the youth who must work hard to ensure themselves of a secure and peaceful environmental future. They must begin from the vantage point of knowledge that the real cause of environmental decay and collapse are the choices of the rulers and their environmental bankruptcy, which dictate that they allocate resources to undesirable actions in the environment, usually ill-conceived projects and the military option, sometimes under pressure from multinationals and governments in the West.

Indeed there can be no democratic transition unless the youth demand and take action to ensure their resolution. There can be no democracy without environmental development and security. This is a challenge not only for leaders of Government but also those in the Political Parties, Forums, Movements or Fronts who find it easier to use youth to achieve their own political ends and shy away from empowering them to take their future in their own hands.

Without youth that are prepared to take over from the old or to correct the mistakes committed by the old, and trained in democratic practice we cannot expect to have a true democratic transition, which must occur in a clean, healthy and safe environment over which they have sovereignty. They can be a roadblock to true political transition. Political manifestos, which ignore this fact, are fit for the dustbin of history. Political Parties that prefer such manifestos are not fit for the 21 st Century.

If youth accept to join such Parties they will only have themselves to blame. It is best that they form their own Parties rather than be imprisoned in 20 th Century leaning Parties. If the Political Parties want 21 st youth to associate in them, they must transform themselves into 21 st Century Parties. These are Parties that are not militarized and see development, progress, freedom, rights, democracy, security, peace, health and education not just in political terms but in broader environmental terms. In other words, they must be environmental Parties. They can be if they decide to be and create the institutional framework for them to be

Therefore, if youth discover that the available Political Parties are or remain too narrow and irrelevant in this environmental age, they can go ahead and form their own environmentally-relevant Parties and associate therein to equip themselves with the associational skills necessary to usher in a truly democratic era. This is an era in which actors believe there can be no democracy in a depreciated, decayed and collapsing environment. Any other way will not work and we are racing against time.

In a way I am suggesting that every Political Party has a good chance to become an environmental leader towards true democratic transition, peace, security, development and progress in the 21 st Century if it manifestly makes this its challenge for the Century. Not just assuming political power and ushering in new political actors along the same old lines!

This, in my view, is what would introduce environmentally-relevant fundamental change in our governance, which should be desired by everyone if it is true political development that we want for ourselves and our country in this globalized world. So far so bad! Later will be too late! Youth listen to this counsel. I think it is counsel for citizenship and wisdom, which all youth require to steer Uganda to greater heights. The old have played their part but the challenges now require complete transformation of the way we see things and it may be difficult to teach an old dog new tricks! Applying past strategies and solutions to our democracy, security and environmental problems today and by the same people who dominated our governance in the 20th Century will be fatal. I mean it. That is why my appeal goes to the youth of today. I mean it. For God and my Country!