By Joseph Ondiek

The Great Lakes region of Africa consists of five basins: Lake Tanganyika basin, Lake Victoria basin, Upper Nile basin, Lake Malawi basin and Lake Turkana basin. It straddles 11 countries of Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan and Ethiopia.

However, while the region is famous for its diverse wildlife, majority of people have only seen it through television, with mostly TV programs from Discovery Channel bringing to the sitting rooms around the world its rich wildlife and plant species.

With initiatives such as conservation tourism, people from all over the world are flocking to the region to see amazing wildlife in its natural habitat. Consequently, wildlife is driving business and contributing to a brighter future to communities living in the region.

But several communities regard the same wildlife as a threat to their existence, since animals tend to wander beyond park boundaries and raid crops that the locals would normally eat or sell.

This has led to wildlife-human conflicts that continue to threaten the life of many species, some of them now registered as highly endangered, like the elephants.

Still, there are others who hunt the wildlife in order to protect their land. Other people also poach and take part in wildlife trafficking to earn a living. Making these communities realize the significance of wildlife conservation remains among the biggest challenges in the region.

The challenge of poverty

Granted, many families are poor. They rely heavily on natural resources in order to derive their livelihoods from the natural ecosystems. These activities lead to increasing pressure on natural resources – activities such as over-fishing and poaching – which gives rise to progressive degradation of the affected ecosystems and loss of habitat for several species they host.

Despite their importance and significance, several rivers, lakes, forests and wetlands in the Great Lakes region are severely being degraded by human activities. They are declining at a much faster rate when compared to terrestrial ecosystems.

Given the big numbers of vulnerable families together with high level of threats to the Great Lakes region’s ecosystems, the region is regarded as a conservation hot spot by several stakeholders. Increased efforts now are being directed towards understanding the important drivers of change, plus ways to address threats that affect the region’s ecosystem.

According to an article published in the WATTERPEBBLE titled, “Water Pollution In Africa: Reasons, Effects, Statistics”, Elvis M. Ives points out that one of the biggest problems facing Africa right now is lack of access to clean water that’s safe for drinking/cooking.

This comes from the fact that most of the continent’s waters are getting contaminated by various human activities – mining, urbanisation, deforestation, industrial dumping, poor sanitation, agriculture, and even politics.

Other major problems curtailing the region’s conservation efforts include drilling of oil and gas in Lake Kivu and areas close to the national parks, logging and illegal mining (particularly in the DR Congo), river pollution as a result of human activities, killing of animals, as well as destroying their habitat.

Some of these activities lead to devastating consequences like global warming, desertification, and disease.

According to Francis Ndagi, coordinator of Virunga Community Programs, a nonprofit conservation organisation based in eastern DR Congo, for these challenges to be overcome, all tourism, conservation and community development stakeholders should work together to develop collaborative actions that seek to address all problems afflicting the ecosystem in this region.

“We seek to conduct activities that promote sustainable community development, protection of the wildlife’s natural habitat, conservation of the Virunga massif, promotion of modern farming techniques, community ecotourism, education of the young people about the importance of conservation, job creation, poverty alleviation, advocacy and research to achieve integrated conservation, community development and responsible tourism in the region,.” he says.

Virunga Community Programs also supports initiatives that allow various stakeholders to track the development and progress towards the achievement of several conservation targets which have been established, and allow policy makers together with the general public receive accurate, well-researched and structured information on the status of the habitats, endangered species like the mountain gorillas in the Virunga massif, as well as ecosystem services in the region.

Share this: WhatsApp

LinkedIn

Print

Reddit

Skype

Tumblr

Pinterest

Telegram

Facebook

Twitter

Pocket

