Mystery Gorilla Foundation

The common dry bean is an important crop grown and consumed throughout Uganda, where it plays a very significant role in the livelihoods of many resource-poor farm households. It is a major source of food and income for the rural smallholder farmers, especially women and children, and individuals involved in its retail trade at both national and regional level. The fact that beans are produced in every district not only shows the dependence on them as a major food security crop, but also their importance in the farmers’ household economy. However, its production is being hindered currently by changes in climate. Beans normally flourish well in temperature ranging from 18-26oC, however, temperatures are getting warmer in some areas and colder in other parts of Uganda. As a result, researchers are developing bean varieties that can withstand heat and cold stresses. In 2016, Uganda’s bean crop experienced some heat stress in a few seasons when the surface temperature shot up to between 2...

Restoring Earth’s carbon balance requires a menu of solutions at many scales, but soil is at the center of them all. We know soils feed plants, and plants feed us, but the world’s soils do more than help put food on the table. Soils recycle nutrients, regulate our water supply and, importantly for this moment in history: they store more carbon than plants, animals and the atmosphere combined. So, focusing humanity’s restoration efforts below ground could turn out to be an essential piece of the climate change solution puzzle. Most signs point to ongoing climate change leading to losses of ecosystem carbon stocks. It’s really important that “we restore that natural pathway of carbon into the soil.” But, do we really know what soils are, how they form, how they get degraded and then repaired, and what they can do to support ecosystems and humanity? A dive below ground can help explain how a soil-focused solution to our climate change problems might work. The basics: Getting to know the d...

On the face of it, our diet has never felt more varied. The traditional 'Kiga' mainstay of ‘Potatoes and veg’ can feel like a distant memory. Most of us have access to more cuisines and flavours than ever before. However, despite the seemingly huge variety of ingredients now present in our supermarkets and on our plates, as a species we consume just a tiny proportion of the world’s available food. Whether we live in Kampala or on the out-skirts of the Bwindi Impenetrable Gorilla forest , the human diet is typically centered around 30 or so main crops. It is estimated that more than 50% of our food comes from just three crops: wheat, rice and maize. Being overly reliant on three crops may not sound like a big problem but with a growing global population and the increasing threat of climate change it may be riskier than you’d think. Climate change is having an enormous impact on how we grow and harvest crops. With extreme temperatures, increasing drought and elevated levels of ca...

For millions of years, the immune system of our ancestors co-evolved with its environment. There are gazillions of viruses, bacteria and other micro organisms out and about to which living beings are being exposed to on a daily basis. Some are beneficial and some harmful, so life learned to collaborate with the benign ones ( there are more non-human cells in your body than human cells ) and to defend itself to the harmful ones ( the immune system of healthy living organisms is still the most sophisticated security system in the world ). Because of the process of co-evolution, life learned to immunize itself to infectious diseases and the immune system of the forest dwellers evolved in concert with the immune system of the forest. For instance, studies with students and elderly show that spending time in nature significantly reduces inflammation. Additionally, research from the Nippon Medical School in Japan shows that time spent in forests increases the number of natural killer cells, ...

The world is producing, consuming, and throwing away more clothes than ever before. Clothing production doubled from 2000 to 2014, with more than 150 billion garments produced annually. Europeans throw away 2 million tonnes of textiles each year. Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned. Many of us donate  our unwanted clothes to charity shops and clothing collection banks - but do we really know what happens to them then? Globally, only 30% of collected clothing are resold on domestic markets, due to poor quality and low re-sale value. The rest are baled and sold to textile merchants who ship them overseas to Sub-Saharan Africa to sell in countries like Kenya, Ghana and Senegal. While exporting our used clothing to the Global South increases the life span of garments, provides access to cheap clothing for low income communities, and creates new local economies, not all of the impacts are positive. The influx of vast quantities of cheap ...

  Plastics do not belong in the environment. Nevertheless, around 600 tonnes of plastic end up in the soil and waterways in Uganda every day - mainly through the abrasion and decomposition of plastic products and the improper disposal of plastic waste. Since plastics only degrade very slowly and accumulate in the environment, the introduction of plastics into the environment must be reduced as much as possible in accordance with the precautionary principle. Versatile material and the associated environmental impact Large quantities of plastics are used in Uganda. six hundred tons of plastics are processed every day, both for durable products such as window frames or body parts for cars and for short-lived products such as packaging or disposable tableware. Every year around 780,000 tons of plastics are used thermally in waste incineration plants and cement works on the one hand, and through recycling on the other. Plastics end up in the environment through the use of plastic produc...