World Bank gives Shs900b to save Lake Victoria

What you need to know:

  • Intervention. Some of the measures include restoring the catchment area and providing alternative livelihoods to swamp dwellers.

KAMPALA.

The World Bank has approved a $240m (Shs905b) loan for the third phase of the Lake Victoria Environmental Management Project (LVEMP) to address myriad challenges afflicting the lake basin across five countries.
The Ministry of Water and Environment Permanent Secretary, Mr Alfred Okot Okidi, told Daily Monitor, that the phase includes specific interventions in “badly degraded” catchment areas such as swamps and riverbanks in parts of south western Uganda.
“What we want to do is to restore the catchment area, including pulling people out of the swamps and give them alternative livelihoods,” Mr Okidi said last week on the sidelines of a meeting of technocrats from the five Lake Victoria basin states under the L. Victoria Basin Commission (LVBC) in Entebbe.
Other interventions include afforestation, re-afforestation, swamp restoration and containing pollution, especially in hotspot areas such as Kampala.
The LVBC is an organ of the East African Community mandated to coordinate sustainable development and management of the lake basin.
Mr Okidi said the meeting discussed the plan for the project implementation which they want to start by next November after signing all the requisite agreements. Out of the $240m (Shs905b), at least $60m (Shs226b) is earmarked for interventions in Uganda.
Lake Victoria is Africa’s largest lake by surface area. Uganda takes about 45 per cent of the water source after Tanzania with 49 per cent and Kenya takes six per cent.
The lake’s catchment area, however, also spreads out to Rwanda and Burundi.
Mr Okidi said the third phase of LVEMP is a build up of the earlier two phases “which provided us with several lessons.”
“One of the lessons we learnt is that resources are not enough to address all needs and we will continuing mobilising for more,” he added.
The LVBC deputy executive secretary, Mr Telly Muramira, told this newspaper in a related interview that the “broad picture is that the general eco system continues to be degraded and we must make interventions to save it and that requires resources.
“In this phase, there is a new outlook focusing on hotspots for pollution and soil erosion which we want to start with,” Mr Muramira said.