Uganda's tea trade supports the livelihoods of up to half a million people

Flickr/ Stefan Gara

[KAMPALA] Some of Uganda's most lucrative tea plantations could be "wiped off the map" under the 2.3 degree Celsius temperature rise predicted for 2050, a study has said.

Even with the expected one degree Celsius rise by 2020, the 60,000 small farmers who grow Uganda's high-quality tea could face a 30 to 48 per cent decline in output, scientists at the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) have said.

Yields are expected to shrink and optimum tea-producing zones will shift uphill to cooler areas according to Peter Laderach, a CIAT climate scientist and an author of the Future Climate Scenarios for Uganda's Tea Growing Areas study, published last month (2 August).

"In practice the rise in temperature is likely to lead to some parts of the plant, or all the plant, wilting or utterly drying as often happens during drought," Wetala said.

The report, whose results were "a shock" according to Laderach, combined the results of 18 climate and two crop-prediction models, concluding that Uganda was set to suffer more than neighbouring Kenya, for a which a report CIAT published earlier this year (26 May) predicted "serious challenges" .

George Sekitoleko, executive secretary of the Ugandan Tea Association (UTA), said: " What scientists are predicting is right because whenever we have prolonged droughts, tea bushes dry extensively. Therefore, when temperatures rise by 2.3 degrees Celsius, impacts shall be extremely serious.

Link to full report  [2.73MB]