Key Messages
Lake Victoria Basin is facing a number of challenges:
- Ecological and biodiversity degradation.
- Declining fish biomass catch and exports.
- Rising water levels and moving islands.
- Untreated and poorly disposed wastes.
- Lake sedimentation due to catchment and buffer zone encroachment.
- Reducing business activity along the lake shorelines leading to poverty, Unemployment and high crime rates.
- Infrastructure, power and transport disruptions.
- Encroachment of the surrounding wet lands such Lwera and forests such as Mabira and Wakawaka.
- Disbandment of beach management units.
Measures to strengthen sustainable management and use of the Lake Basin ecosystem services:
- Empowering the local communities and media to protect the lake basin, biodiversity and ecosystem.
- Effective regulation of all the lake activities including fishing and waste disposal.
- Managing the lake basin jointly as a transboundary resource.
- Efficient enforcement of the existing laws such as the 200m buffer zone away from the lake.
- Finding alternative land for industries away from the lakes, rivers, forests and wetlands.
- Incorruptible, efficient, skilled and well equipped lake regulatory body to effectively monitor all activities on the lake.
- A coherent plan for conservation and rehabilitation of the lake fish fauna.
- Restoration of the degraded wetlands and forests within the basin.
Files and links
Country
Sustainable Development Goals
