Environmental stupidity is prevalent in Uganda. However, it is not so much about unwillingness to make right that is wrong but s much about those in power abusing the political and economic advantage they enjoy to cause the overwhelming majority harm. This is not to exempt this majority from blame; they should have leveraged their numerical advantage to bring about ‘environmental sanity’.

During the struggle for freedom in many African countries, the fighters espoused the concept that “it is more honourable to die on your feet than die on your knees.” Put anther way: It is better t die standing, not kneeling. Ugandans should accept collective responsibility for the prevailing ‘environmental stupidity’, if not they should not expect Armageddon after death: they have created their own on Earth and it is more punitive than what they expect in Hell.

So, what do I mean by environmental stupidity?

Although I have elsewhere dwelt on human stupidity so far, it is just a preamble to what I have said about human stupidity as a preamble to my topic of discussion “environmental stupidity spiralling upwards in uganda despite decades of institutionalised natural resources conservation”.

For the purposes of this article, I will define environmental stability as “the lack of knowledge, wisdom, understanding and insights necessary to manage and conserve the environment wisely, meaningfully and effectively.

Often the kind of education a society propagates will determine whether or not a people have the knowledge, wisdom, understanding and insights necessary to mange and conserve the environment wisely, meaningfully and effectively.

In the past, there was a close relationship between the natural environment and human societies. In traditional indigenous societies in Uganda, for example, the people were integral to the environment and there were restraints and constraints regarding the extent to which they would exploit the environmental resources without harming nature’s carrying capacity. The education which guided the relationship between the human societies and nature was holistic, not broken down to small pockets of knowledge called disciplines, which characterise what is called modern education.

Modern education teaches that we are not part of but apart from the environments. This is institutionalised environmental stupidity number one. It explains why many societies regard the environment as something to exploit, and not the theatre in which we do everything and need to manage and conserve wisely for sustainable use and benefit.

The second environmental stupidity is the popular attitude perpetuated by modern education that all environment is physical environment (that is, ecological-biological). Yet environment is a multinational concept, with four dimensions: the ecological-biological dimension, the socio-economic dimension, the socio-cultural dimension and the time or temporal dimension, with the dimensions also multi-dimensional, reflecting the intricate nature of the environment and the interconnectedness its dimensions.

Environmental stupidity is seen in environmentally unconscious laws and policies as well as rising environmental injustices reflected in ecological decay and collapse as well as cultural, social, spiritual, moral, and ethical decay and the abuse of time (in terms of use and application of time scales to projects and programmes.

There has been spiralling upward environmental stupidity over the decades despite the launching of environmental training programmes at different universities in Uganda. This has been the case even when there has been institutionalisation of environmental management and conservation – both governmental and non-governmental.

When environmental stupidity rises, so environmental immorality, environmental ignorance, environmental corruption, and environmental bankruptcy, particularly among the upper strata of society and among corporate entities. Together, all these operate to reduce the quality of the environment and, by extension, the quality of life.

It is environmental stupidity among policy-makers, governors and leaders that explains the widespread deforestation in Uganda, whereby natural forests are being replaces by monocultures of sugarcane and oil palm, ostensibly for economic development.

It is environmental stupidity among policy-makers, governors and leaders that explains the proliferating culture of land grabbing and destruction of traditional agroecological system, which have been the basis of food security for the indigenous groups of Ugandans for centuries.

It is environmental stupidity among policy makers, governors and leaders, that explains the failure of the government and private investors to manage wastes and pollution meaningfully and effectively, preferring to dump wastes in rivers, swamps and lakes and onto productive land/soils, and pouring pollutants into the atmosphere, thereby compromising the quality of the physical (ecological-biological) environment.

It is environmental stupidity that explains the continuing curricular design that separates humanity from nature and the environment, projecting them as things to be exploited to satisfy the greed and selfishness of humanity.

It is environmental stupidity at local and national levels that explains why humanity and corporates continue to design and implement projects and programmes that add no value to the quality of the environment, but stress and constrain it with such projects and programmes only committed to integrating the citizens into the money economy at the expense of the environmental economy. The Environmental economy stresses the interplay between economic activity and the environment, aiming to balance economic development with environmental sustainability. 

It focuses on understanding how environmental issues like pollution, resource depletion and waste dumping affect economies, and how economic policies can be designed to address these challenges. We now know that the environmental goods and services sector, abbreviated as EGSS (EUROSTAT) and also referred to as environmental economy or eco-industries, consists of a heterogeneous set of producers of goods and services aiming at the protection of the environment and the management of natural resources. It is, however, more critical to emphasise development rather than growth.

Last but not least, it is environmental stupidity that explains why over the last 40 or so years the governor have been guided by a development philosophy that puts infrastructure first, environment and nature next and people last, completely unconscious of the fact that the integrity of the environment can only be built if the unity of people and the environment.

Therefore, instead of concentrating on just institutionalising environmental management and conservation to preserve exploitation of resources to satisfy our greed and selfishness, we should put in place policies and laws to combat environmental stupidity from bottom to top of society.

Environmental stupidity spiralling upwards in uganda despite decades of institutionalised natural resources conservation.

Human being at one time or another, have acted stupidly. There are any number of terms used to describe stupid behavior: stupidity, dumbness, silliness, obtuseness, imbecility, foolishness, folly and idiocy, to name just a few (Kets de Vries, Manfred, 2023).

Stupidity has no limits (2021). There are as many types of stupidity as there are dimensions of the human brain: social, cultural, economic, ecological, moral, ethical, environmental et cetera. However, many people will react angrily or even violently, if told that they are stupid.

Among the ever-present vices in human societies is human stupidity. Professor Pitkin has made a survey of stupidity among the great, among nations and races, indeed, such a massive array of stupidity in general as to convince the reader that stupidity is everywhere and that one is warranted in indicting Professor Pitkin for stupidity for making so much of stupidity. One need not search far to understand why human beings are stupid. It is simply because they are human beings (JAMA, 1932).

The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary defines stupidity as behaviour that shows lack of thought or good behaviour or as the state of being slow to learn and not clever or intelligent.

In 1976  Professor Cipolla published a 60-page essay describing the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as the greatest existential threat to humanity: stupidity. He divides humanity into four main categories: intelligent, bandit, helpless, stupid. All are defined on the basis of a win/lose concept, slightly echoing the prisoner’s dilemma. The question is: what category are you in?

Professor Cipolla (1976) cited by Wagner (2019) innovated 5 Laws of human stupidity, namely:

Law 1: Everyone always and inevitably underestimates the number of stupid people in circulation.

We are surrounded by many idiots but we tend to underestimate their number because of superficial factors such as the positions they hold in society, the jobs they perform, education at whatever level or because they are multimillionaires or billionaires, which conceal stupidity

Law 2. The probability that a person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

Stupidity is a variable that remains constant in all populations. Every category you can imagine – gender, ethnicity, nationality, education, income – has a fixed percentage of stupid people. University professors can be stupid. There are Presidents have been and/or are stupid. Some Popes have been stupid. Even top military commanders have been or are stupid.

Law 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or group of people when he or she does not benefit and may even suffer losses.

This is the Golden Law of Stupidity according to Professor Cipolla. A person causes problems to others, to a community or to a nation without any clear benefit for himself or herself. According to Cipolla, three other phenotypes coexist with stupidity. First, there is the intelligent person, whose actions benefit both himself/herself and others. Then comes the bandit, who gets rich at the expense of others. And finally, the abused, the defenceless person, whose actions enrich others at his own expense. The abused might be the people of a whole nation.

Law 4: Non-stupid people always underestimate the destructive power of stupid individuals.

Non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times, in all places, and under all circumstances, dealing and/or associating with stupid people is always a costly mistake. We underestimate idiots, and we do so at our peril. 

Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

According to Cipolla, a stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit. We can’t do anything for idiots. The difference between societies that collapse under the weight of their stupid citizens and those that transcend them is the composition of the non-stupid. Declining societies have the same percentage of stupid people as prosperous societies. But they also have a high percentage of defenceless people and, ‘an alarming proliferation of bandits with accents of stupidity

There is no defense against stupidity. The only way for a society to avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is for the non-stupid to work even harder to compensate for the losses of the stupid. When you draw the parallel with the environment, and some people trying to make up for other people’s bullshit, Cipolla was not far from the truth (Cipolla, 1976; Wagner, 2019).

For God and my country

• A Tell report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula / Environmental Historian and Conservationist Centre for – Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA), Seeta, Mukono, Uganda.

About the Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA)

The CCTAA was innovated by Hyuha Mukwanason, Oweyegha-Afunaduula and Mahir Balunywa in 2019 to the rising decline in the capacity of graduates in Uganda and beyond to engage in critical thinking and reason coherently besides excellence in academics and academic production. The three scholars were convinced that after academic achievement the world outside the ivory tower needed graduates that can think critically and reason coherently towards making society and the environment better for human gratification. They reasoned between themselves and reached the conclusion that disciplinary education did not only narrow the thinking and reasoning of those exposed to it but restricted the opportunity to excel in critical thinking and reasoning, which are the ultimate aim of education. They were dismayed by the truism that the products of disciplinary education find it difficult to tick outside the boundaries of their disciplines; that when they provide solutions to problems that do not recognise the artificial boundaries between knowledges, their solutions become the new problems. They decided that the answer was a new and different medium of learning and innovating, which they characterised as “The Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis” (CCTAA).For God and my country

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