World's 2nd Largest Fresh Water Lake Under Threat
Environment, 5/19/2000

Tanzania's move to open a gold mine 20 kilometers from the shores of Lake Victoria could be disastrous on the lake's bio-diversity and the fishing industry, participants in an international conference here warned.

Delegates attending the ongoing Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity at the headquarters of the UN Environment Program were informed that the project, dubbed Getagold, intended to use sodium cyanide, a highly toxic chemical in the processing.

"Should any of this cyanide find its way into the lake, Tanzania will not suffer alone but so will her neighbors and millions of other people," said Tundu Lissu of the Washington-based World Resource Institute (WRI).

Lissu made the revelation during a session discussing the Convention on Biological Diversity and Procedural rights in Africa.

He deplored that the downstream effects of using sodium cyanide near a river resource had not been considered.

"Worse still," he said, "the project is being established just next to a river that drains into the lake."

Lake Victoria is the second largest fresh water lake in the world, and the biggest in Africa.

It serves the three east African countries of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, mainly by generating income for communities living around it, and it is the source of the Nile river that drains its waters into the Mediterranean Sea and lifeline for Sudan and Egypt, which solely depends on it for a reliable water supply.

Last year, the communities suffered a major blow after the European Union imposed a ban on fish from the region following reports that fishermen were using poisonous substances to kill fish. The ban is still enforced on Kenya.

The lake has also become the victim of the vicious water hyacinth weed whose growth has denied fishermen access to the lake and killed many other aquatic species through suffocation.

Lissu said he feared that some or all of the sodium cyanide used on the site could find its way into the vast lake.

"This is a disaster in the making," he told delegates.

This is justification enough that the three countries ought to come up with a comprehensive environmental governing instrument to monitor such activities, he suggested.

Uganda's delegate, Benson Ochieng, from the African Center for Technology Studies said environment issues would be handled only with community participation in decision-making processes. This is in accordance with principle 10 of the Rio Declaration on environment and development, Ochieng said, adding that it was only by enforcing law on environmental policies that would make the latter hold water and impact more on the country.

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