Ernest WaitituThe Washington TimesMay 26, 2009 NAIROBI, Kenya -- A dispute over a one-acre island in Lake Victoria
that has fueled talk of war between Kenya and Uganda is but one
instance of increasing conflict over shrinking water resourcesthroughout Africa.Such conflicts pit ethnic groups, races and nations against one
another and are likely to get worse, fueled by a toxic mix of climate
change, environmental ruin, mounting
droughts and famine.The Kenya-Uganda dispute concerns ownership of the tiny but
fishing-rich Migingo Island in Lake Victoria - at 26,560 square miles,
the world's biggest tropical lake and
slightly larger than West
Virginia.In recent months, Uganda has sent troops and police to the
island and hoisted its national flag. Members of Kenya's parliament
urged the Kenyan government
to set up a naval base on the lake to "deal
with external aggression."Negotiations between the two countries in March, followed by
Uganda's decision to lower its flag on the island
last month, appeared
to have cooled tempers for a while. But on May 12, Ugandan President
Yoweri Museveni told the BBC that "the island is in Kenya and the
waters are in [Uganda] ... one foot
into thewater and you are in
Uganda."Mr. Museveni went on to say that soon no Kenyan would be
allowed to fish in Ugandan waters. The Kenyan Parliament reacted
angrily to the comments,
with members criticizing Kenyan President Mwai
Kibaki for stressing diplomacy as Uganda annexed what the parliament
members insisted was Kenyan territory.Tensions go back three years, when
Uganda arrested, jailed and
purportedly tortured a Kenyan fisherman accused of poaching in Ugandan
waters.The scrap over Migingo Island is only one example of conflicts
over water rights
throughout Africa that often reflect the effects of
climate change and land degradation.Frank Muramuzi, director of the Kampala, Uganda-based National
Association of Professional
Environmentalists, said that Lake
Victoria's dropping water levels - down about 6 feet in the past four
years - have destroyed important breeding grounds for fish on the edges
of the lake.Shallow waters around islands such as Migingo are now among the
few remaining breeding grounds for fish such as Nile perch, a leading
export and foreign-exchange earner for both Kenya and Uganda.Satellite images reveal an unprecedented shrinking of the 677
biggest African lakes. This has intensified fears that water shortages
could trigger new conflicts across a continent where more than
340
million people already have little access to safe drinking water.In Ethiopia, Lake Haramaya, once a burgeoning source of livelihood for thousands of people, is bone-dry.In
Central Africa, the once mighty Lake Chad has lost more than
90 percent of its water because of deforestation, climate change and
bad policies. The lake sits on the borders of four nations: Cameroon,Chad, Niger and Nigeria.When Lake Chad's waters began to dwindle, a significant number
of Nigerian refugees went to Cameroon. In the mid-1990s, Nigerians
founded more than 30 Lake Chad
villages in Cameroon.Tension rose between Nigeria and Cameroon when Nigeria
established state control and public services in the Nigerian-populated
villages.The two countries went
to war in the 1990s, prompting the Lake
Chad Basin Commission to move in and help negotiate a truce. The
commission failed; the case then was turned over to the International
Court of Justice, which
in 2002 ruled in Cameroon's favor.Nigeria at first challenged the ruling, but in 2007 agreed to
relinquish the territory. Many Nigerians have never forgiven their
government for giving away
"their" land.The U.N. secretary-general's special adviser on conflict, Jan
Egeland, called attention to the Sahel region when he visited last
year. The United Nations says the
region that divides the Sahara Desert
from the rest of Africa is experiencing the worst effects of climate
change in the world.Mr. Egeland said he was informed that about 30 armed groupswere in the Lake Chad area. The "potential for increased conflict is
endless," he said.The 17 countries of the West African region, which share 25
trans-boundary rivers, also have
been involved in wrangles over water.Dozens of people died in a series of skirmishes between Senegalese and Mauritanian farmers along the River Senegal in 1989.Increased barriers
on the border have prevented open conflict in the years since, but tensions persist.Ghana and Burkina Faso are at odds over competing claims for water from the Volta River.For East
Africa, the dispute over Migingo Island could be a
taste of conflicts to come. Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile and
the lifeline for millions of people, continues to lose water.The
Nile, which supports 160 million to 180 million people in
nine countries, is also in trouble. Egypt has long warned that it would
go to war to protect its access to Nile waters.A recently
released U.N. study, "Third World Water Development
Report," noted that while water-supply targets are being attained in
much of the world, "sub-Saharan Africa and low-income Arab
states are
far from the target, and some risk backsliding."By 2020, the report said, 75 million to 250 million people in
Africa may be exposed to increased water stress owing to climatechange, and "conflicts will likely intensify."Kenyan journalist Ernest Waititu is reporting on East
Africa water issues with support from a grant from the Pulitzer Center
on
Crisis Reporting.See the article as it ran at The Washington Times
For related reporting visit the Water Wars: Ethiopia and Kenya project pageBack to top
Internally displaced civilians receive food aid distributed by the U.N. World Food Programme at a camp outside Somalia's capital Mogadishu, May 26, 2009. A surge in violence this month has killed ...
