Water Towers

Posted in Aquatic Ecosystems

Both of the great lakes, Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika, and ultimately, the White Nile depend on the regional catchments referred to as Water Towers of the region. The Water Towers of eastern Africa are a collection of mountain ecosystems and associated river basins. These areas have a major influence on regional hydrology and global climatic cycles.

The majority of the main water towers in the region are under very serious threat and several are severely degraded; the threats are anthropogenic in nature. Many of the forests have been cleared extensively mainly for agricultural purposes and human settlements and face additional pressure from surrounding human settlements.

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Freshwater resources

Posted in Aquatic Ecosystems

The EAC region has large rivers, lakes, water bodies and wide spread ground water resources.

Unfortunately, these resources are currently not exploited to their maximum potential due to various natural and human factors. The factors include:

• extreme spatial and temporal variability of climate and rainfall coupled with climate change,
• growing water scarcity, shrinking of some water bodies and desertification,
• inappropriate governance and institutional arrangements in managing national and trans-boundary water basins, and
• failure to invest adequately in resource assessment, protection and development.

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Aquatic Ecosystems

Posted in Aquatic Ecosystems

The role of freshwater resources, marine ecosystems and wetlands in accomplishing the needed socio-economic development goals is widely recognized in EAC region. However, water insecurity is one of the major socio-economic problems that undermine the regional efforts in improving the quality of life of the people.

On the face of it, water should not be such a constraint to development as the region is endowed with vast and abundant water resources.

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