Despite their intricate role in conservation, culture, sociality of indigenous communities, are taken as primitive and should, therefore, be replaced by modern systems of management. However, this means a clash between those systems and the survival interests of the indigenes culturally and socially.

In Uganda whole ecosystems and environments and the cultural and social systems they engender and are engendered by are being ruthlessly destroyed by latter day modernists, traditionally, biologically and historically belonging to the nomadic-pastoral human energy system. The agroecological farming, forest systems and water systems that have been the foundation of conservation are being assigned to the past in total ignorance of why they existed.

Therefore, wholesome environmental development now and in future is being excluded from meaningful development, transformation and progress well in future. The indigenous communities can never hope to enjoy secure futures in the now distorted environments and ecosystems, which they are losing control over. There can never be a secure future for anyone or any group of people without commitment leadership or governance to environmental development.

According to IGI, the publisher of Timely Knowledge, environmental development can simply be put forward as an economic and social development that respects the environment. This, however, is too narrow a definition to convince a broad-minded environmentalist because it narrows the dimensions of development to only two: economic and social. Yet as I have shown above, development is a multidimensional process and concept. Besides, the IGI definition inserts economic development at the centre of environmental development as if it is superior to other types of development, and as if environmental development cannot take place without economic development.

One thing is true. Environmental development is superior to economic development because it is inclusive of all other types of development.

We need a broader definition of environmental development to capture its true essence. To capture the essence of environmental development we must first understand what environment is or what it really means. Let me begin with what environment is not.

Environment is not “what surrounds us humans” as it has been taught to generations of millions of learners nationally, regionally and globally in every environmentally-oriented programme of instruction in every school, college or university since it became a subject of study.

I have taught environment to generations of students at advanced level in schools, and to undergraduate and graduate learners of Environment, Ecology, Environmental Management, The Biology of Conservation, Environmental Science and Environmental Planning and Management. In all cases, I have used the definition: Environment is everything.

When one is a conservation biologist, like I am, one has the primary concern of the ecology and environments of our Planet Earth, and of conserving all life and non-life in their natural states and natural environments, along with their interconnections, interdependences and natural life-death cycles.

Thus, to the conservation biologist, losses in food chains and food webs, which prescribe the interdependences and interconnections, constitute and reflect a serious degradation of the environment and its ecosystems. Yet in his pursuit of conquest of Nature, Man, Homo sapiens, has exacted a trail of extinctions in pursuit of economic development at the exclusion of other types of development, principally environmental development.

Consequently, meaningful and effective development has persisted in being an ever-distant possibility as environment has continued to be degraded to quench greed and selfishness of Man, H. sapiens as if he is apart from, and not part of, the environment.

Environment includes plants such as Algae, Gymnosperms (non-seed vascular plants) and Angiosperms (Seed Plants) and animals (i.e Protozoans, Metazoans, Coelenterates, Acoelomates, Minor Acoelomates such as the Nemerteans and Nematodes; Annelids, Arthropods, Echinodermata, Protochordates, Chordates and Vertebrates. 

Environment includes rocks, soil and the air we breathe, water we drink and the food we eat. It includes rivers, lakes, mountains and wildlife areas. It includes our forests and swamps. It includes our farms and rangelands. It includes clouds, sands, rain, natural ecosystems, biocultural systems, and the life-death cycle, in which are the inanimate and animate matter.

All our natural resources belong to the environment. It includes all our artificial things and systems that Man, Homo sapiens, has put in place such as our health systems, academic systems, intellectual systems, economic systems, sociocultural systems, socioeconomic systems, political systems, industrial systems, drones and even artificial intelligence, transport systems, education systems, et cetera. It includes humans, indigenous groups, ethnicities, clans, et cetera.

One can go on and on expounding on the composition of the environment. However, strictly speaking, our environment extends upwards above the surface of the Earth as far as the tip of the largest and tallest tree on Earth. It extends downwards as far as the deepest trench of the oceans. The world’s largest and tallest tree is called Hyperion. It is a coastal redwood tree whose scientific name is Sequoia sempervirens. It is located somewhere in the heart of Redwood National Park in California, USA. The Hyperion reaches a staggering 380 feet aboveground.

The deepest trench is in western Pacific Ocean, about 200 kilometres (124 miles) east of the Mariana Islands. It is called Mariana Trench. That is as far as life is possible. In the lead of diving to the deepest trenches of the Ocean are Cuvier’s beaked whale whose scientific name is Ziphius cavirostris. It can dive from the ocean’s surface down to 2,992 metres (9,816 feet), thanks to adaptations that help it conserve oxygen and survive extreme pressure.

Thanks to increasingly advanced submersible vehicles and cameras, scientists are discovering more about our planet and the creatures living here beneath the surfaces of our waters.

There are birds of the air that can get out of the Earthly environment and go thousands of feet into space, but must come back down into the environment to feed and reproduces. When they come back they reintegrate themselves in the food chains and food webs therein.

The highest-flying birds that must come down to the environment to feed and reproduce, according to Heath Hall (2023) are: Ruppel’s Griffon Vulture (37000 feet), the Crane (33000 feet), Bar-headed Goose (29000 feet), whooper Swan (27000 feet), Alpine Chough (26,500 feet), Bearded Vulture (24,000 feet), Mallard (21,000 feet), Bar-Tailed Godwit (20,000 feet), White Stork (16,000 feet), Andean Condor (15,000 feet).

There are aeroplanes too that can go thousands of feet out of the Earthly environment into outer space with people and goods, but like the high-flying birds that come back to feed and reproduce themselves, they must come down to deliver people and goods to their destinations, fuel and take others.

According to Smithsonian Magazine dated July 17, 1962, American test pilot Robert White took the X-15 to an altitude of 314,688 feet (95.916902 metres). But it is Russian pilot Alexandr Fedotov who holds the world altitude record set on August 31, 1977, when his MiG E-266M reached 37,650 metres. He went and came back to our environment.

Of course, Man, H. sapiens has gone out of our environment using spaceships and reached as far as the Moon (384,400 kilometres away from Earth) and has recently been exploring Mars. So far, only uncrewed spacecraft have made the trip to the red planet, but that could soon change. 

NASA (i.e., National Aeronautics and Space Administration), an independent agency of the US federal government, is hoping to land the first humans on Mars by the 2030s – and several new missions are launching before then to push exploration forward.

Structurally, environment consists of four dimensions:

The ecological-biological dimension, which constitutes 25 per cent of the entire environment and its foundation. All physical things – biological and non-biological, living and non-living are found in this dimension, as are all the ecological biological processes of the environment such as soil formation, climate change, etc.

Socioeconomic dimension, which constitutes 25 per cent of the entire environment and is where socioeconomic changes take place, and social and economic institutions are primarily found, although being physical are also found in the ecological-biological dimension.

Sociocultural dimension, which constitutes 25 per cent of the entire environment, and is where socio-cultural processes take place. Social and cultural institutions are found in this dimension primary, but are frequently shred with the socioeconomic dimension.

Temporal (or time) dimension, which constitutes 25 per cent of the environment, and is where time scales are assigned. Every process and event in all dimensions of the environment is time-determined.

For God and my country – Uganda!

• A Tell report / By Prof Oweyegha-Afunaduula, a former professor in the Department of Environmental Science of the Makerere University, Uganda