Uganda, Nov. 25 -- Uganda is among five countries in the world that signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for a forest partnership with the European Union (EU) at the just concluded Conference of the Parties 27 (COP27) UN Climate Change Conference in Egypt. The MoU is a partnership to preserve forests and support local communities with the aim of reversing deforestation, and enhancing climate and biodiversity protection.

The partnership comes at a time when it is most wanted because it is well placed to support an earlier developed initiative named Independent Forest Monitoring (IFM), a process by which civil societies and communities living in and around forests have the opportunity to monitor, document and report suspected illegal...