Virtually all people of age have definitely heard of the term democracy but few are aware of environmental democracy. It does not necessarily mean true that the two coexist. A country may be practising democracy but far removed from practicing environmental democracy. A country may be a democracy but not an environmental democracy.  

For a society to be a democracy, everything is organised in such a way that the citizens are sovereign, control the government from bottom to top. There is no discrimination or tendency for one group to be supremacist and racist in its relationship to other groups of people or the resources. All effort is made to ensure that all citizens have equal opportunity for justice, health, education, nutrition, public services, freedom from hunger, torture, and for security, employment, promotion, housing, et cetera.

A democracy as a State is distinguishable from a monarchy, aristocracy and dictatorship. Its government is erected and based on supreme power and authority being invested in the people by constitutional design; not in an individual. The people exercise their supreme power directly or indirectly through a system of representation, usually involving periodically held elections.

The leader or ruler becomes sovereign and supreme instead at the expense of the people, and may direct the making of laws and policies that free him from the people so that he or she pursues his wishes and choices onto the people through the executive, legislative and judicial arms of government. He or she ends up owning the executive, legislature and judiciary and using all of them to achieve his or her goals of power and legitimacy.

He or she, therefore, will ensure he or she allows people to engage in regular or periodic election, not to empower them to exercise supreme power, but to legitimise his or her rule or leadership by casting him or her as popular, but he or she makes sure the people do not vote freely to choose their leaders. He or she will have complete control over the electoral process so that the results are the ones he or she desires.

The strategy is “the end prescribes or justifies the means”. Under those circumstances, the leader may become perennial but still claim that his country is democratic and that he or she is committed to building a democratic country, although it is apparent that the elections are a matter of life and death, which the leader or ruler must win at all costs – in terms of money and life.

This explains why such leadership and rule tends towards monarchical, hereditary and dynastical rule dominated by ethnic and kith and kin preferences, and maintained and sustained by gun power. Accordingly, any democratic principles and practices that may persist end up being eroded, along with the necessary ethical and moral threads.

The ruler or leader becomes the omega and alpha, the beginning and end of everything. Where ethnic and kin selection are pronounced, a country is lucky if Apartheid-like governance does not completely replace democratic rule, with a minority occupying and controlling the majority.

Where supreme power is vested in an individual constitutionally, it will be a miracle if that individual does not become dictatorial guided by presidentialism and bigmanity or big man mentality. Without saying, both presidentialism and bigmanity are averse to institutionalism, formal power and formal structures. The one who exercises power will begin thinking, believing and being convinced that he or she is the embodiment of democracy and that without him the country he leads or rules cannot be.

Unfortunately, over most of Africa, what I have so far written is obtaining. Some rulers stick to power and rule from abroad, but when elections are held, they win by over 90 per cent of the vote even when they do not interact with the citizens. A good example is President Paul Biya of Cameroon, one of the longest ruling leaders in modern Africa.

President Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Museveni, who is entering his 38^th year in power and has been subjecting himself to periodic elections since 1996, at least allows his nearest opponent to get 30 per cent of the vote. However, he makes sure that as he rules, he does not allow his opponents to organise and access the electorate. Almost after every presidential election he is on a campaign trail alone till the next election.

However, since the 2022 presidential election, he has allowed his son, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, and his son-in-law, Odrek Rwabogo, to also access the electorate – at public cost – as the leaders of the alternative political parties are chained as of old.

Uganda experienced a five-year rebellion from 1981 to 1986 in the Luwero Triangle, which the combatants, now in power in Kampala have continually sold and celebrated at public cost as a liberation war despite the fact that numerous Rwandese refugees were involved in its execution and leadership.

One school of thought has persistently characterises it as a war of attrition, conquest and occupation, intended to remove indigenous people from centrality in determining leadership, governance and destiny of their country, owning it and its resources or even controlling government. With this political and military reality, it is far-fetched to continue holding that Uganda is a democracy or that it is democratising. It is de-democratisation continually taking place.

Therefore, repeated periodic elections organised by the long-staying politico-military regime in power have not meant that the country becomes a democracy. It is best categorised as both a politico-military and militia-political country because politics and the military have been purposed to create and ensure power does not lie with the indigenes but people with exogenous roots.

The imbalance of power is continually determined by people of enormous military roots in the bushes of Luwero who have reserved their roots in the army and also function as powerful politicians. They dominate the executive and legislative arms of government, with many of them serving as ministers and legislators by nomination or even election.

With passage of time, they are enhancing their leverage and influence on the Judiciary, and consequently influencing appointments of judicial officers and the judicial processes and their outcomes. The journey to democracy in Uganda has not started and will not start if the status quo continues.    

For a society to be an environmental democracy, the leadership, at whatever level, must put environment at the centre of every decision it makes in governance – whether the decision is a by-law, law, policy, curriculum or development. If this is the case in a given country or group of countries, then that country or group of countries is an environmental democracy. The society thereof will be an environmental democracy.

For the purposes of this article, environmental democracy should be understood as an area of knowledge and practice that is concerned with environmental resources such as forests, water, land, nature, and the environment itself. It explains how fairly the resources are shared by the people and countries (especially if they are transboundary resources between localities, countries or regions).

Accordingly, it is concerned with the laws, policies, strategies, guidelines and practices designed to ensure equity and justice in access and use of the environmental resources.

Unfortunately, greed and selfishness are rising in severity locally, nationally, regionally and globally, far more than was ever the case in the past. Whole ecosystems, habitats and agroecological systems are being unfairly appropriated by men and women in power or connected to power, firms, governments or even governments in league with foreigners and foreign firms. In some cases, resource wars are being initiated in other localities, countries, regions and globally, disregarding existing by-laws, laws, policies and guidelines regarding shared resources.

Although the requirement that Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) should be carried out and ensure public participation regarding decisions on resources desired by governments and firms and institutions have been established to ensure both environmental democracy and environmental justice, everything is being done by absolute rulers, dictatorial governments corporate firms to abuse human and animal access rights to certain resources such as land, water and forests.

Political and corporate corruption of the EIA has become the rule rather than the exception. Genuine EIA designed to ensure environmental democracy and environmental justice is continually denied.

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