Investigation of the Lake Victoria Region

General information about the region. The study area encompasses region of Victoria Lake and 3 adjoining countries: Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. Lake Victoria is the second largest fresh water body on the Earth with unique environment giving origin of the Nile waters. Lake Victoria occupies a shallow depression in the East African Plateau. Being 68,800 square kilometres, Lake Victoria is Africa’s largest lake and largest tropical land. The lake only received waters from precipitation, and has the only outflow river – White Nile. The maximum depth of the lake is 84metres and an average depth is 20 metres, so that it is a shallow water reservoir. The Victoria lake supports largest inland fishery in Africa.

Specific objectives and aims. Besides unique environment, Victoria lake plays an important role in the economy of the surrounding countries supporting 25 million people through lake fish catchment reaching up to 90- 270$ per capita per annum. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda control 6%, 49% and 45% of the lake surface, respectively. Thus, the lake catchment provides for the livelihood of ca 1/3 of the population of all three countries which have an agricultural economy mostly supported by fishing and agriculture (tea and coffee plantations). The quality of the environment is therefore a fundamental factor in maintaining and increasing living standards of the growing population. The main actual problem of this region is sustainable development, well-balanced between overusing of the natural resources and human economic well-being and progress. Essential factors in this problem are rate of population growth and dimensions of natural resources management. The GIS spatial analysis and mapping has been performed using ArcGIS software.

According to the results, the population keeps growing and the demand for the natural resources for the feeding of population will remain high. The country with maximal amount of population is now and will be Tanzania, reaching more than 86 mln people by 2030. This country will therefore have maximal demand for natural resources and the government of this country should take special care of the sustainable development of its resources and region. However, some special concern may increase in case of Uganda which has maximal potential area of forests to be converted to the croplands, because having still great absolute number of total population (more than 44 mln people) it has much less variable and diverse natural resources, especially forests. When examining the forests that have to be converted from the inside and outside the protected areas, Tanzania has the most vulnerable situation, in impressive absolute value (more than 6 thousands km2) as well as in “quality” proportion: 1/6 of the total forests are located in protected areas. Therefore, the politics of sustainable development is an absolute prerequisite for successful environmental monitoring in the Victoria Lake region. It is necessary to find out ways for sustainable using of natural resources and to maintain economic reasonable development of all three countries, and thus to provide harmonic coexistence of the humans and nature. I would strongly suggest switching from the extensive using of fishery as the main way of economic development towards less ecology-pressing styles of life and economic model: e.g. development of the resource-saving technologies or artificial planting of new forests areas.