Lake Victoria: Pollution Crisis

Hello! In this blog we will be looking at a particular case study of Lake Victoria, a basin that is considered the ‘chief’ reservoir of the Nile and second largest in the world (Britannica, 2022). Ecologically, it harbours high biodiversity with its catchment area endowed with wetlands, woodlands and farmlands. Over the years the lake has been subject to pollution and contamination from sewage water and fertilisers which has deteriorated the lake’s water quality significantly. We will be delving more into this pollution crisis and its impacts on the local people and its mitigation strategies.  

 

Figure 1: Lake Victoria catchment area (Source)

Lake Victoria

As shown in Figure 1, the lake itself is a transboundary lake shared by Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya (43%, 51% and 6% territory percentage respectively). The lake is very shallow, with a depth of only 40m-79m and covers a total area of 68,000km²) (Okungo, 2022). The catchment area of the basin extends further to include Rwanda and Burundi, where this area holds the most value, due to the high biodiversity and tropical rainforest like biome.

 

The lake holds the largest freshwater fishery in the world, with a large labour base of 200,000 people and a net annual production of 1 million tons of fish. The basin population is approximately 40 million people, with the rate growing at a rate of 3.5%. As discussed in the previous post, the lake acts as a reservoir for the many hydropower stations along the Nile, elevating its importance relative to the other dams along Nile basin, as it is further upstream.  (Miriti, 2021). For the people, the lake/basin is a source for energy, food, domestic drinking and irrigation water for agriculture. Economically, the basin holds biodiversity conservation projects, in an attempt to maintain its renowned ecological biome that has attracted tourism worldwide. These developments around this populous basin has had unfavourable effects on the lake and ecosystem, in the area (Okungo, 2022). 

 

Drivers of the lake endangerment and contamination

The degradation of this all important reservoir has driven organisations to identify the main causes of this; Cooperation in International Water in Africa (CIWA) is a conservation group managed by an international higher company called World Bank Water Practice (WBWP) after conducting their inspection of the catchment area, have recognised major anthropogenetic factors as the cause (Shyam KC, 2022). 

 

Figure 2: Lake Victoria pollution from sewage water (Source)

 

The first, is the unsustainable land and agricultural practices/management; this involves the reclamation of land where consequently this depletes the buffering capacity, load run off with harmful chemicals and livestock. Therefore, more anthropogenic gases such as nitrogen and phosphorous are released into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming (Miriti, 2021). The other cause is through unmonitored disposal into the lake of untreated wastewater from the industries local to the basin (Figure 2), as well as from urban areas; more likely from the informal settlements around the poorer villages being deposed into the rivers upstream.  

 

Governmental intervention and management plans

 

Given the importance of this resourceful Lake Basin to the local people, the CIWA funded the NCCR to start a project in aim to improve availability of water quality data, building capacity to undertake multi-criteria analysis and co-ordinating policies and foundations for governing water quality in the basin (Shyam KC, 2022). Other national and international parties such as Agenda 21, and LVEMP and IFMP have attempted to promote sustainable development/conservation through limiting fishing in the certain areas and putting regulations on the size of fishing gear being used. They have also planted trees in wetland areas in aim to mitigate nutrient enrichment and pollution (Miriti, 2021). Unfortunately, the success rate of these projects has been quite minimal, to the lack of definitive regulation from higher arching political bodies, on open access fishing and continued land use and urban development. This limited progress highlights the importance of having more involvement from higher arching national bodies who can actually enforce rules and regulations legitimately, to boost successes.