Hippopotamuses from Lake Naivasha, one of Kenya’s biggest freshwater water lakes, are ending up on village farms, and this worries Kariuki Wachira. Why?
Because the hippos are leaving the lake to look for fresh water.
Although fed by three perennial rivers, the lake has sustained a heavy blow from increased pollution and destruction of nearby forests.
Two of the main rivers that flow into the lake, Malewa and Gilgil, occasionally dry up and a thick algal broth develops among the papyrus groves on the lake’s margin.
As a result, hippos are often trapped in mud pits around the lake, and occasionally wander into people’s farms looking for water.
The small-scale farmers around the Lake are bearing the brunt.
Kariuki says they have toiled for months to create another 35 “smaller lakes” next to Lake Naivasha. And this is where Hippos fleeing pollution sometimes quench their thirst.
“We no longer depend on the lake any more. We have enough water for my family and farming and I even use this water to farm fish. The fish fingerlings take 6-7 months to grow. I then sell the fish and this is where I get my income from,” he explains.
These are actually water pans, which trap flash floods. Even though this water has to be purified, Kariuki says they are content.
He explains the idea of digging water pans came after the 2009 drought.
Together with 34 other farmers, they formed the Mawe Tatu self help group and started digging a water pan for every member. It took them one and half years for every member to acquire one water pan.
“The water pan measures 20 by 20 metres and three metres deep and can carry an amount of water of 400,00 litres when full and this makes it not to dry up even when there are no rains at this area,” Kariuki says.
The water pan consumes 600 square metres amount of paper with one square metre costing Sh340.
The farmers received a boost from international environment group World Wide Fund for Nature
who offered materials and basic knowledge of building the water pans.
WWF also defrayed 46 per cent cost of the full project while the farmers footed the remaining 54 per cent.
Kariuki now uses the water for farming and purifies it for household use and for feeding his four cows.
In Ndabibi central of Naivasha Sub county of Nakuru County, another farmer, John Mwaura, explains how he used to practise subsistence farming but now even sells his farm produce to the market.
“WWF helped me set up a water pan and this has changed my life in a great way whereby I sell my farm produce to the market and people have been flocking my homestead to buy these farm produce like potatoes, kales, arrowroots, fruits and avocadoes,” Mwaura says.
“I have used the water from the water pan to farm Napier grass and other fodder crops that I feed my cows. In a day I manage to get 60 litres of milk unlike before where I used to get 12 litres during drought,” Mwaura says.
Mwaura, who has over 150 chickens, buys poultry feed from wheat and maize farmers immediately after they harvest at a cheaper price.
Degradation of environment in Naivasha has been brought about by high level of economical activities partly due to population increase through normal birth rates and migration.
Tree logging and charcoal burning in Aberdare Forest, in the upper catchment area of Lake Naivasha, is rampant.
Imarisha Naivasha, an organisation formed in 2011, coordinates conservation within the Lake Naivasha basin.
Mbogo Kamau, the CEO of Imarisha Naivasha, explains how water abstraction from the lake and subsequent drought in 2009 almost dried up the lake.
“Geothermal installation and horticultural industries depend on the water from the lake, increasing the demand for water,” Mbogo says.
Lake Naivasha is fed by rivers Gilgil, Karati and Malewa being the main.
Mbogo says that River Malewa stopped flowing into the lake during the 2009 drought.
But water abstraction from the lake continued with flower factories installing a water canal at the centre of the lake.
“Waste water from septic tanks and storm water that carried all forms of dirt from towns including poor agricultural activities with use of fertilizers, manure and soil was all taken to the lake,” he says.
He says that Imarisha Naivasha was formed to address these issues and ensure proper management of land by farmers, and generally encourage an integrated approach to management of the basin.
An integrated management plan was developed and the Integrated Water Resource Action Plan Programme (IWRAP) launched.
The Water Resource Management Authority, a government agency mandated to manage surface and underground water, is also playing a big role to rescue Lake Naivasha.
Their regional offices in Naivasha have taken the role of data collection, storage and analysis through the use of open source IT solutions.
They have managed to rehabilitate their water quality lab, through funding from the WWF, where they test samples of water to determine the quality of water.
Geoffrey Mworia, the technical coordination manager of WRMA in Naivasha, says they have trained people on management of water and how they report those found polluting water.
“Any person or industry found polluting the water will have water disconnected until rectification is done,” Mworia says.
“When there is a drop at the level of water we advise with conditions of reducing water use and when the water is at black spot, which means has reduced completely, we disconnect water used for production and allow only for human use. When the water is clean and at a high level we allow farmers to irrigate as much as possible,” he adds.
In a separate conservation effort, communities in Lake Naivasha catchment areas have joined a new programme to stop pollution of the lake.
Drip irrigation for flower factories require clean water and therefore these factories end up spending huge amounts of money in water purification.
The introduction of Payment for Environmental Services eased their work as land use in the upper stream was improved to provide downstream users with better quality of water.
Downstream users agreed to contribute money that would be given to the upper stream users for conservation.
“PES is only done in marked sites, mostly the steep areas and our role as WWF is to help farmers implement it by providing them with resources like Napier grass and cock fruits for terraces. Currently, we have over 3000 PES members,” says Daniel Koros, WWF’s technical officer for the Naivasha Landscape Programme.
Downstream beneficiaries provide incentives to upper stream land users for the services resulting from voluntary conservation efforts.
“Six years back the water was very dirty until PES came to existence. Only members of PES can understand our role in ensuring there is clear water in our rivers but we include non-members in our education programmes,” says Francis Gichimu, a gauge reader.
There are PES negotiators whose role is to mobilize buyers for the contribution of the scheme.
“Negotiations take place with the buyers where we show them the importance of having water that is of high quality and address the challenges at the upper stream. They positively react and write a cheque to the Water Resources Users Associations that later buy conservation materials to the farmers,” says David Kihari, a PES negotiator.
“As buyers we realised the need for conservation and viewed this scheme of paying for environmental services as a good intervention from WWF and WRUA. We therefore agreed to pay some money by writing a cheque of between Sh50,000 Sh10,000 annually to the WRUA,” says James Waweru, the general manager at Panda Flower Farm.