Source: The East African (Nairobi), November 8, 2005
by Philip Ngunjiri, Special Correspondent Nairobi
Africa losses billions of dollars in tourist recreational fees, fishing and use of water from its fresh water lakes due to environmental destruction.
United Nations Environment Programme executive director, Klaus Toepfer, told the 11th World Lakes Conference in Nairobi last week that African countries sharing the continent's more than 600 fresh water lakes also face increasing tensions and instability arising from competition for water among various communities.
Mr Toepfer also launched an atlas, of the continent's fresh water lakes. It compares and contrasts satellite images of the past few decades with contemporary ones. It brings to light damaging environmental changes facing Africa's lakes. The satellite images show how other factors, both natural and human, have adversely affected the lakes.
Extensive deforestation around Lake Nakuru in Kenya is a glaring example of degradation. Compiled by Unep and the University of Oregon in the United States, the atlas assesses the strength of legal agreements between countries sharing Africa's major water systems.
Satellite measurements, detailing the falling water levels of Lake Victoria are also mapped. Africa's largest freshwater lake is now about a meter lower than it was in the early 1990s.
"I hope these images of Africa's lakes will galvanise delegates here to even greater action to conserve and restore these crucial water bodies," said Mr Toepfer. "If we are to overcome poverty and meet internationally agreed development goals by 2015, the sustainable management of Africa's lakes must be part of the equation. Otherwise we face increasing tensions and instability as rising populations compete for life's most precious resources," he added.
Lake Victoria, with some 30 million people living around it, supports one of the largest and poorest populations in the world. Around 1,200 people per square kilometre live in and around the lake and their average annual income is less than $250.
An estimated 150,000 square kilometres have been affected by soil degradation of which 13 per cent is severe.
Meanwhile, water hyacinth has caused havoc to shipping and the fishing industry.
However, the introduction of a pest to control the weed has had some impact. Satellite images from 1995 and 2001 show the hyacinth has disappeared from many of the Ugandan bays such as Buka, Gobero, Wazimenya and Murchison.
Other images in the Atlas include the rapid shrinking of Lake Songor in Ghana, partly as a result of intensive salt production, the changes in the Zambezi river system due to the building of the Cabora Bassa dam site and the shrinking of Lake Chad, which is almost 90 per cent .
The atlas concludes that, in order to reduce tensions between nations, more needs to be done to beef up shared agreements and treaties to avoid instability in future. It mentions the Volta river basin in West Africa, shared by Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote D'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali and Togo, as a particular source of concern.
Over the next two decades, population levels are set to double to around 40 million causing a dramatic demand for water. Meanwhile, rainfall and river flows in the region have declined steadily in the past 30 years. This is partly linked to higher evaporation rates as a result of climate change.
The precise number of lakes, both natural and human-made (dams and reservoirs), in Africa is unknown. But the World Lake Database puts the number at 677. Globally there are an estimated 50,000 natural and 7,500 human-made "lakes". In Africa Uganda - with 69 lakes - has the highest number followed by Kenya, 64; Cameroon, 59; Tanzania, 49 and Ethiopia, 46. Gabon, has eight lakes, the least in Africa, followed by Botswana, 12 and Malawi, 13.
Africa has about 30,000 cubic kilometres of water in its large lakes making it the largest volume of any continent in the world. The annual freshwater fish catch in Africa is around 1.4 million tones of which 14 per cent comes from Egypt
The East African (Nairobi)
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