The £33m aid project was designed to help poor Ugandan farmers deal with the impact of ‘climate change’
But the reality saw their crops and homes destroyed in an “inhuman” project that left them “on the brink of starvation”.
Local government officials, who were guarded by armed security forces, razed crops, trees and homes as they claimed to be re-wilding wetland in a project run by the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which has received £2.6bn in UK taxpayers’ money.
It is one of a number of controversial projects uncovered in a seven-month investigation by The Telegraph into how the Government is spending £11.6bn in International Climate Finance (ICF).
On Friday, The Telegraph revealed how the public has paid for a £52m road to nowhere through the jungle in Guyana, rusting solar panels on schools in Zimbabwe and condoms in the Congo all under the guise of climate aid.
It comes as Sir Keir Starmer prepares to meet with world leaders at next week’s Cop30 summit in Brazil, where his spokesman said he would be “driving forward the agenda” on “restoring the UK as a global leader on climate action and green growth”.
But his government will face questions at home over their ‘green’ agenda amid revelations that dozens of the programmes have been beset with allegations of fraud and waste.
The Telegraph can reveal that taxpayer money has also been spent on programmes accused of human rights abuses and for solar panels for one of the world’s richest hotel chains.
This publication has also established that a £70m ‘carbon’ capture and storage programme, which was due to help the Chinese oil industry, closed without launching a single project.
In Uganda, a £33m project called “Building Resilient Communities, Wetland Ecosystems and Associated Catchments” is designed to improve “subsistence farmers’ ability to deal with climate impacts”.
It was singled out as a success story by UK officials and used as a case story as part of Defra’s “International Climate Finance Evidence Project”. But in reality, the “inhuman” scheme has left “misery and trauma” in villages that were never officially designated as part of the wetlands, residents say.
One man in his 70s was so shocked when officials, accompanied by armed police and soldiers, turned up unannounced and chopped down his crops that he died of a stroke, they add.
Residents of eight villages in south west Uganda have launched a complaint with the independent redress mechanism (IRM) of the GCF. They claim that in November 2023 local government officials, guarded by the police and the army, carried out “gross” human rights violations which left the residents “on the brink of starvation”.
The residents accuse them of “invading our land, homes and plantations of trees, bananas, coffee and seasonal crops like maize, beans, millet, cassava, groundnuts, rice and razing all of them to the ground” claiming that they had been built on wetland.
Ruhinda Kaboss, a community leader, told The Telegraph that the GCF “thought that it was going to help us, but we have just ended up crying”.
“We have lived on that land for 150 years, but when someone comes with a gun, what are you supposed to do?” he added.
Those who claim to have lost their homes and their land said they had not been offered any compensation. Lawyer Peter Arinaitwe, who is representing the residents, also claimed the need for wetland protection had been exaggerated to secure green aid.
He said that the project had “absolutely not” helped the subsistence farmers who knew nothing of the wetlands until officials were “on their land with chainsaws cutting down their crops”.
The IRM is currently overseeing a “problem-solving” case between the residents and local officials.
It has also received separate complaints about the actions of armed security forces in other villages and the drowning of a 17-year-old labourer and an eight-year-old girl at project sites.
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