Distributed by All Africa Global Media(AllAfrica.com)

Monday, March 05, 2001

by Aana's Special Correspondent

Nairobi, Mar 05, 2001 (African Church Information Service/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX)-- Disagreements over water catchment areas, in and around Mt Kenya Forest, in central Kenya, has already been replayed several times over elsewhere in the world. The tussle over water rights and control of the streams and catchment areas is but the initial pointer to the direction the control over natural resources, particularly water, will take in the 21st Century, water experts say.

Ibrahim Godana, a Boran pastoralist of northern Kenya, clutches onto a tuft of dry grass and in a fit of anger, mutters a curse to an unknown object. At the height drought in September last year he had lost sizeable stock of his herd and he could not stand seeing his family and livestock succumb to the devastating drought that for close to two years has wiped out the hundreds of stock he kept.

His anger though could not hold back any more when, in the company of fellow herdsmen they invaded the Mt Kenya Forest, local people around the mountain petitioned the government to prevent them from grazing their animals in the forest.

The worst was to come when Samburu and Turkana pastoralists too drove their cattle into the forest. The locals and invaders for some time last year were locked in a tussle over the control of the forest, the main water catchment in the region, as the government urged patience and understanding.

For a people whose livelihood is closely tied with availability of water, the resource has a divine meaning. Denial to it can provoke a conflict for it is something similar to murder. For pastoralists in Kenya, water is mythic, and by it one can be cursed or mysteriously exposed to eternal suffering.

Since the El Nino weather experience four years ago, water has been serious challenge to herders and farmers in East Africa in the intervening period between prolonged torrential and dry weather.

The tussle over the water catchment areas, in and around Mt Kenya Forest, as has already been replayed several times over elsewhere in the world is over the rights and wrong of water.

The tussle over water rights and control of the streams and catchment areas is but the initial pointer to the direction the control over natural resources, particularly water, will take in the 21st Century, water experts predicts.

Be it in tropical wetlands or deserts the world over, the potential of water causing war is more likely in this century than ever before, says World Water Vision in its annual report for last year.

The report says that as the world population rises rapidly between now and 2025, annual per capita availability of renewable fresh-water will fall from 6,500 cubic metres to 4,800.

In water deficient regions, the report says that the amount of water available for use will usher in a water stress phenomenon to more than 3 billion people in the world.

In light of such grim predictions of the future of water in the world, conservationists in East Africa have now want to take advantage of the nascent East Africa Community to harmonise their conservation efforts along border hotspots where abuse of water catchments goes on with abandon.

Towards the end of last year, Kenya Uganda and Tanzania embarked on what they have called "Reducing Bio-diversity Loss at Cross Border Sites in East Africa" with focus on border spots where bio-diversity is under threat.

The US $12.65 million five-year project is funded by the World Environment Facility GEF and the implementing agency is the Food and Agricultural Organisation FAO.

Along the Kenya-Tanzania border, the project focuses on protection of the Mt Kilimanjaro Forest, now threatened with lumbering on the northern side of the mountain whose drainage benefits the farmers Kenya's for Taita Taveta, Wundanyi, and Narok districts in Kenya.

However, immediate threat posed by the depletion of the vegetation in the mountain forest is the contamination of rivers. The silted rivers have reduced the amount of water available to the residents who depend on the many rivers that drain into Kenya.

Along the Tanzania-Uganda common border, the two countries are jointly conserving the Sango Bay and Minziro forests, the source of the many rivers that drain into Lake Victoria. Wanton felling of tree in the forest threatens the region's bio-diversity, according to a paper presented by one of the project co- ordinators.

Along the Uganda-Kenya common border, the two countries have joined efforts to protect the Karamoja-Turkana mountain forest, the source of water that flows into Lake Turkana and over which the Turkana and Karamajong communities have over the years fought over.

Citing these kind of examples elsewhere in the world, a Department of International Development DFID - a British overseas development agency - quarterly report notes that in this century, conflict over the control of water will be more overt and serious that this has not been the case so far.

The report tilted, Development, says that stream siltation and diversion of water upstream could the genesis of future of conflicts between states of communities or could be a point of compromise in conflict if states agreed to work together to protect water sources, and by implication bio-diversity.

The report says that although there have been localised small scale conflicts over the control water sources, "it is not impossible to envisage a large-scale 'water wars' although the potentially huge (and futile) cost far outweighs any significant gain from 'capturing water' in this way. The international community has began to recognise this fact".

Beyond the water wars, says the report, there is more important food security stakes for countries at war with each other. For example Ethiopia and Eritrea fighting over the water endowed Afar region, the tension between Egypt and Sudan over the River Nile water and the Middle East crisis which, in essence, is a war over the rights to control arable land - with water.

The report notes that unilateral decisions by countries to go it alone in the protection of water resources continues to cause tension in southern Africa and the Middle East.

The report summarises the simmering conflict: Different conceptions are held by different states in such basins (along common borders) affecting their ability to establish a starting point for co-operation a defusing tensions.

And as facts on the ground are constructed, so reconciliation and trust are diminished. "At the sharp end of the water scarcity, the luxury of shared visions is confronted with the uncomfortable reality of poverty," the report says.

The report recognises that water crisis in the present century is going to be a major challenge to policy makers in "ensuring that this does not become a century of conflict over water between communities, households, rather than states and governments".