Diminishing water resources threaten peace

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By Ernest Waititu THE WASHINGTON TIMES

NAIROBI, Kenya -- A dispute over a one-acre island in Lake Victoria that has fueled talk of war between Kenya and Uganda is but one instance of increasing conflict over shrinking water resources throughout Africa.

Such conflicts pit ethnic groups, races and nations against one another and are likely to get worse, fueled by a toxic mix of climate change, environmental ruin, mounting droughts and famine.

The Kenya-Uganda dispute concerns ownership of the tiny but fishing-rich Migingo Island in Lake Victoria - at 26,560 square miles, the world's biggest tropical lake and slightly larger than West Virginia.

In recent months, Uganda has sent troops and police to the island and hoisted its national flag. Members of Kenya's parliament urged the Kenyan government to set up a naval base on the lake to "deal with external aggression."

Negotiations between the two countries in March, followed by Uganda's decision to lower its flag on the island last month, appeared to have cooled tempers for a while. But on May 12, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni told the BBC that "the island is in Kenya and the waters are in [Uganda] ... one foot into thewater and you are in Uganda."

Mr. Museveni went on to say that soon no Kenyan would be allowed to fish in Ugandan waters. The Kenyan Parliament reacted angrily to the comments, with members criticizing Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki for stressing diplomacy as Uganda annexed what the parliament members insisted was Kenyan territory.

Tensions go back three years, when Uganda arrested, jailed and purportedly tortured a Kenyan fisherman accused of poaching in Ugandan waters.

The scrap over Migingo Island is only one example of conflicts over water rights throughout Africa that often reflect the effects of climate change and land degradation.

Frank Muramuzi, director of the Kampala, Uganda-based National Association of Professional Environmentalists, said that Lake Victoria's dropping water levels - down about 6 feet in the past four years - have destroyed important breeding grounds for fish on the edges of the lake.

Shallow waters around islands such as Migingo are now among the few remaining breeding grounds for fish such as Nile perch, a leading export and foreign-exchange earner for both Kenya and Uganda.