SafariLands.org: Environment: Do we really care for Lake Victoria

The event, appropriately held on Uganda's Kalangala islands on Lake Victoria and attended by delegations from East Africa and beyond, came amidst claims of many "efforts" reportedly being made towards conserving the water body.

Frankly, if the number of registered institutions and NGOs claiming to have a goal of "conserving" Lake Victoria were anything to go by, then this water body would probably be one of the happiest, cleanest and most beneficial in the world today.

Almost every other day there is an NGO, CBO, agency or group that is formed under the auspices of protecting the water body whose resources and sources are shared by all the East African countries.

Yet, ironically, this enormous resource - the world's second largest fresh water Lake - has continued to remain a victim of many unhealthy forces from all sides.

The drop in water levels mainly due to hydropower production recently reached an all-time low resulting in serious power and water shortages in countries around the water body.

In Uganda for instance, there was 24-hour load-shedding for most of 2006-2007.

The same country is now being accused by other East African countries of secretly entering into an agreement with Egypt recently in order to fasten the flow of water from the already receding lake.

Cities and towns around the lake that draw its water for domestic and industrial purposes such as Kampala, Kisumu, Bukoba and Mwanza have had water supply crises.

It's worth noting that the falling water level is just one of many problems facing Lake Victoria at the moment, all primarily as a result of environmental degradation.

The lake’s basin caters for about one third (30 million) of the total population of the three countries of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

Of the 30 million, three million are directly or indirectly engaged in fishing.

Several fishery plants surround the lake and fish fillet is daily hipped to other parts of the world bring in a lot foreign exchange in the region.

This means that the decreasing water levels in the lake together with the general environmental pollution expose all these lives and revenues to risk.

Dr. Faustino Orach-Meza, the former National (Uganda) Executive Secretary of the Lake Victoria Environmental Management Project (LVMP), once noted that the challenges facing the lake need to be addressed immediately.

"The main issues of concern within the Lake Victoria Basin revolve around dropping and deterioration of water quality, land degradation, destruction of biodiversity and misuse of natural resources," he said.

The causes of the rising pollution of the Lake are as many as they are diverse and each of the East African nations is responsible.

The Air Water and Earth (AWE) organisation says that in Uganda, point sources and non-point sources such as deficient sewage and industrial wastewater plants, small-scale workshops, waste oil from parking lots and car repair garages are major sources of the pollution load entering the lake.

Similarly, the Lawyers' Environmental Action Team (LEAT) of Tanzania points to the increasing pollution from the Mwanza-based factories and mines discharging waste into the Lake as another threat to its future.

The lack of a centralized sewage collection system in Mwanza means that domestic waste is also dumped directly into the Lake.

In Kenya towns of Kakamega and Kisumu discharge inadequately treated or totally untreated sewage in rivers draining into Lake Victoria because of deficient treatment plants, AWE says.

"Most of [Lake Victoria's] fishers remain poor. Infrastructures such as fishing landing beaches and sanitation facilities are in a poor state. Some 200 species of fish have disappeared from the Lake in the last 40 years and fish catch per unit of effort has fallen from 30 fish or more per net in 1920s to less than one at the turn of the last century," Dr. Meza said.

It is obvious that these environmental and socio-economic problems have negatively impacted the lives of the people within communities surrounding the lake and their respective countries.

Just last year, President Kikwete expressed concern over the increasing acts of over fishing and illegal fishing in Lake Victoria.

"Over fishing is posing a great threat. Reports show that the number of fishermen has gone up from 51, 935 in 2002 to 98,015 last year," he said.

Fishing vessels operating in the lake have also increased from 15,434 to 29,730 during the period. "I really wish these findings were wrong," lamented the President.

Many other people would probably wish the statistics were wrong but they are not.

Unexplainably, as so many resources are ostensibly directed towards saving the lake, the situation deteriorates by the day.

The fishing communities along the Lake's shore have remained the poorest throughout the region with particularly high HIV/Aids infection rates than the rest of the population.

It was everybody's hope that the formation of LVMP, among other initiatives, was a milestone in addressing the issues surrounding the lake.

But upon the completion of its First Phase in 2005, with all due respect, no credible achievement has been recorded.

It has now entered into Second Phase which extends to 2013 and is going to cost about $65 billion borrowed from the World Bank.

This is the phase which, according to the Tanzania national coordinator for the project, Stanley Matowo, speaking in Mwanza last week, that will focus on empowering groups and social organisations so that they become fully involved in the lake's conservation.

Let's hope that this is not just going to give room to more toothless briefcase NGOs and CBOs while the lake continues to worsen.