Climate change and exploitation of resources: a threat to environmental balance
The Turkana County in Kenya is known as the cradle of mankind thanks to the archeological findings regarding the eldest ancestors of men. There is the Turkana salty water lake, which bathes the shores of Ethiopia too.
Today, the County is in extreme danger, caused by the long droughts. These are produced by the climate change and the hydroelectric and agrobusiness Ethiopian projects that threaten the Turkana Lake, which is the sole water supply for the indigenous communities of the territory. In fact, 300.000 people live along the shores of the lake, fishing and breeding goats and cattle.
The data collected by the Kenya government show a clear tendency in the rise of mean yearly temperatures in the Turkana region, 2 and 3 degrees centigrade in between 1967 and 2012. Even the climate models have changed: precipitations diminished visibly, and the rain season has become shorter and drier.
Human Rights Watch has carried out a research study in the Turkana County in between April 2014 and February 2015 in which political strategies, policies, and development plans for the safeguard of the lake’s ecosystem have been examined.
The prolonged droughts and scarce rainfalls did intensify the difficulty of access to drinkable water, turning each day into a struggle for survival. Women, girls, and kids are responsible for the task of finding water: every day they go for extremely long walks to search for water in the dry riverbeds.
An unavoidable threat factor must be taken into account: industrial development. During the last decades, Ethiopia has promoted numerous plans for the construction of dams, cotton and sugar plantations that need constant water supply for irrigation, drains and many other structures near the lake.
According to predictions, water supply will be more than halved in the future, making some scientists believe in a shocking result: the division of the lake in two parts. The first, in the North, supplied by river Omo; and the second, South, supplied by rivers Kerio and Turkwel.
Were this to happen, the quantity of sweet water will drastically diminish, causing a growth in in the salinity and the water temperature, which in turn will decimate the fish fauna, not capable of reproducing at high temperatures.
The natual consequence would be a food crisis, that could be resolved in a non-peaceful way, bringing conflict among the communities for what concerns the control of the lake area.
Today, the hoarding of water resources is becoming a theft in food security, which is highly in danger for the scarcity of water, threatening the ecosystems’ balance and the good relations among neighboring villages.
Photo : 2012 © European Union – ECHO/Malini Morzaria
Found Turkana Lake!
