Lake Victoria

Water management needs in the Great Lakes region of Africa are critical, with inadequate institutions, policies and implementation capacity for effective watershed management. As part of a larger Regional Dialogue to Improve Transboundary Water Resources Governance in Africa, United Nations University - Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) undertook a comparative study of management approaches by lake commissions in the African Great Lakes and Laurentian Great Lakes in North America.

Dansk Ornitologisk Forening (DOF) and BirdLife partners in the South (Nature Kenya, Nature Uganda and Bird Conservation Nepal (BCN)), are running a three-year project that began in 2015. The project places a strong emphasis on promoting equality of women and their access to programme benefits and participation, addressing inclusion of indigenous and other marginalised groups, networking and strengthened influence of local civil society groups_and advocacy within the national contexts of programme partner countries.

Kajulu and Nyando (both upstream) and Dunga (downstream) wetlands are located in Kisumu County. Upstream land is largely privately owned and mainly used for agriculture, energy needs and water. Deforestation and water diversion upstream worsen soil loss, leading to siltation and agro-chemical deposits downstream, which then leads to eutrophication of wetland ecosystems, reduced rainfall and reduced water flow to downstream swamps. All of this combines to cause a loss of wetland biodiversity, low crop output hence worsening food insecurity situation.

Farm Forestry (FF) presents opportunities for the improvement of rural livelihoods and biodiversity conservation in Uganda. In a recently implemented project (Integrating FF and Biodiversity Conservation), a multiplicity of grown trees presented great potential, but also constraints when it came to sustaining FF for biodiversity conservation_projects. The constraints can present major setbacks if actual values of crops and trees components on people's farm lands do not explicitly translate into economic values.

Anthropogenic pressures pushed the once productive waters of Winam Gulf, in the Kenyan part of Lake Victoria, into a degraded system dominated by nuisance macrophytes (water hyacinths) and blue green algae blooms, affecting water intake, lake transport and logistics, fisheries, hydropower production and tourism. Various donor-driven approaches taken in the past decades to remove water hyacinth were only effective for a limited period of time.

Model households are a key aspect of the Health of People and Environment in the Lake Victoria Basin (HoPE-LVB), an integrated Population, Health_and Environment (PHE) project with sites in Kenya and Uganda. Model households are trained in multiple project activities to illustrate behaviors that allow families to thrive without taking a toll on their environment and natural resources.

Bussi Island is located in the Wakiso district, which suffers a deforestation rate of 86.7 percent. The leading cause of deforestation is the increased demand for agricultural land, charcoal and fuel wood by a rapidly growing population. The majority of villagers often cook using the three-brick/stone method, which requires massive consumption of firewood, increases carbon emissions and has serious consequences for people's health. Over time, women that use this method of cooking may suffer blurred vision and lung disease.

The Health of People & Environment in the Lake Victoria Basin (HoPE-LVB) is a 3-year project in rural areas of the Lake Victoria Basin in Uganda and Kenya that aims to provide underserved families and communities with knowledge and skills to improve reproductive health, reduce levels of poverty through livelihoods_and sustainably manage local natural resources. In 2012, HoPE-LVB conducted a baseline study to inform project design and determine baseline values for key outcome indicators.

People living in the Lake Victoria Basin face urgent health, environmental, and economic challenges. They need the power to access sexual and reproductive health services and manage their natural resources sustainably. In two districts in Uganda and two counties in Kenya, the Health of People and Environment in Lake Victoria Basin (HoPE-LVB) Project is making sure they can.

Integrating women smallholder farmers into the mainstream economy is key in order to increase their productivity, improve the quality of their commodities, gain a voice in decision-making around all aspects of the agriculture value chain and build adaptive capacity to mitigate climate change. NEPAD recognises the impact that climate change will have on African agriculture, especially African women farmers, and designed the five-year Gender, Climate Change and Agriculture Support Project (GCCASP) with support from the Norwegian government.

Over 800 million people are malnourished and the global population is growing, and at the current trend 9 out of 10 children living in poverty in 2030 will be from Sub-Saharan Africa. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Zero hunger and the SDG Life below water'promote the conservation and sustainable use of aquatic resources for sustainable development.

The research effort_looks at the trends in fishing effort and landings from 2000 to 2014 in relation to the performance of the Beach Management Units (BMUs) since they were put in place. Having conducted a survey on the performance of the BMUs, researchers notice that the BMUs have rules and regulations that have been put in place. Respondents identified critical habitats that are presented in this research, some of which have since been demarcated. Results show that BMUs know critical habitats and identify them as areas where fish breed (97%).

BirdLife Partners from Kenya (NatureKenya), Uganda (NatureUganda), Rwanda (Association pour la Conservation de la Nature au Rwanda) and Burundi (Association Burundaise pour la Protection des Oiseaux) are implementing a project in the Lake Victoria Basin which aims to empower local organizations so that they are better equipped to address the linked challenges of poverty and biodiversity loss. Lake Victoria is Africa's largest lake, and the largest tropical lake in the world. The swamps, forests and islands in and around Lake Victoria are important for a diversity of wildlife.

A recent expert review of the ecological risks of net pen aquaculture in the North American Great Lakes made a number of recommendations for Best Management Practices (BMPs) that should be applied to establishment of net pen farms. Based on that_study, researchers identified nine generic BMPs that could be applied to all Global Great Lakes.

Yala wetland is a biodiversity rich and diverse ecosystem comprised of the Yala River, Yala swamp and numerous satellite lakes which serve as habitat for birds, haplochromines and cichlid fish species that long disappeared in Lake Victoria and numerous other species. The wetland faces anthropogenic threats such as reclamation of wetlands for farming, burning and over-harvesting for papyrus crafts and cooking fuel, fishing grounds, accessibility paths and sand harvesting.

Earth system models are the only scientific tools yet developed that are capable of integrating the multitude of physical, chemical and biological processes that determine past, present and future climate. Researchers here use the Community Earth System Model (CESM) to generate depictions of environmental futures under climate change specifically to serve stakeholder needs for each of the major Great Lake watersheds.

In 2005, work began on_assessing the presence and habitat requirements of spotted-necked otters (Lutra maculicollis) in Kenya and Tanzania. During the project team's trip to Kenya they visited a school conservation club presenting information on the otters and involving students in a field trip experience. As a result of this visit, a small group of teachers formed the Kisumu Science Teachers Lake Victoria Otter and Wetlands Conservation Development Group (KISTOC).

In an effort to address the escalating pollution of Lake Victoria, the GEF Small Grants Programme (GEF SGP) supported a project implemented by Environmental Women in Action for Development (EWAD) aimed at improving the ecosystems of Lake Victoria. This project restored degraded sand mining areas, promoted the use of energy efficient fish smoking kilns and introduced environmentally friendly Eco san toilet facilities in Kigungu, Entebbe Sub district.

Lake Victoria's Yala Wetland is made up of mainly papyrus (Cyperus papyrus) stands. It is an internationally recognized Important Bird Area that hosts many bird species found only in papyrus stands, some of which can only be found in Lake Victoria swamps. Two of these birds, papyrus yellow warbler (Chloroptera gracilinostris) and papyrus gonolek (Laniarius mufumbiri) are listed as globally threatened species which require urgent conservation action.¹ The swamp provides social, economic and ecological benefits, values and functions to the community and its biodiversity.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014) predicts by the end of this century ~1 4 degrees_C warming and an uncertain trend in future rainfall in the Great Lakes region of East Africa, perhaps 10% lower than present in the Malawi/Nyassa basin and 10% higher in the lake basins to the north. Radar altimetry records of lake level trends available since 1992 display decadal scale variability of 1-2 m, with an overall trend in the last decade towards lower levels in Lakes Malawi/Nyassa and Rukwa, and higher levels in the lakes to the north of Rukwa.