WWF’s Mara River Basin Initiatives

Interviewee

William Kasanga Kasanga

World Wildlife Fund / Mara River Basin Management Initiative, Project Manager

Interviewers

Alison M. Jones

NWNL Director and Photographer

Alison M. Fast

Videographer

In Musoma, Tanzania - on October 5 ,2009

Introductory Note

It seems I’ve heard of World Wildlife Fund all my life – as an inspiring tool for conservation. In 2004, I flew to Mexico’s Michoacan Mountains, bringing LightHawk’s Cessna for use by WWF and monarch-butterfly specialist Dr Lincoln Brower. We flew them over the butterflies in the illegally timbered Oyamel Pine forests to document the deforestation there causing the death of millions of over-wintering butterflies dependent on the now-missing oyamel pine boughs’ protection from the cold.

The issue of deforestation was also central to our 2009 NWNL discussion on droughts with William Kasanga in Tanzania’s Lower Mara River Basin. Historically low water levels that year were due to rampant deforestation upstream in Kenya’s Mau Forest. So again, I deeply appreciated all that WWF does to fight deforestation and other environmental disasters around the globe.

Outline

INTEGRATED WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
LOW RIVER FLOWS IMPACT PEOPLE
LOW RIVER FLOWS IMPACT WILDLIFE
LOW RIVERS IMPACT ECONOMIES
PASTORALISM v. WILDLIFE CONSERVATION
SEEKING BALANCED SOLUTIONS
MARA RIVER POLLUTANTS
PESTICIDE POLLUTION
FARMING DURING DROUGHTS
RIVERINE FORESTS
TRANSBOUNDARY CHALLENGES
SHARED FISHERIES
AS A MARA RIVER STAKEHOLDER

Key Quote People might think that dwindling water resources in the Third World would result in conflict since it’s such a crucial resource. I believe that people always sit and discuss amicably to agree on proper uses of their shared resources.

INTEGRATED WATER RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

NWNL Greetings and thank you for meeting with us. World Wild Fund /WWF is well known worldwide. We are so pleased to meet with you and learn more about your work for WWF here in Tanzania’s section of the transboundary Mara River Basin.

WILLIAM KASANGA Yes, WWF is a global conservation organization. I am its project manager for this watershed’s Management Initiative on the Tanzania site, which is implemented by WWF, the World Wide Fund for Nature.. My role is to facilitate integrated water resources management in the basin. To do so we have established various pillars to support this concept we are implementing in the Mara River Basin. One pillar is an environmental policy for implementing virtual resource management. Another pillar is information that can support decision-making in the Mara River Basin.

NWNL What are the largest challenges WWF faces in instituting an integrated water resource management program?

WILLIAM KASANGA The overall challenge to managing the basin’s shared resources is that the Mara River Basin is a trans-boundary resource shared by two governments that share the same resource. The three largest specific challenges are:

–to define our abilities

–the limited amount of water that the river now is facing

–and the demands for that water.

Additionally, Our Water Quality Program also addresses pollution of the water resources of the Mara that make it non-potable.

NWNL These are large and critical issues; and they match those NWNL has outlined for its own documentation of the impacts of quality, quantity and availability of our natural freshwater resources.

LOW RIVER FLOWS IMPACT PEOPLE

NWNL What documentation do you have on changes over the last 10 or 20 years on water availability and water levels in the Mara River?

WILLIAM KASANGA The most impactful change in water availability that we have explored and that are experienced by local stakeholders is the falling of water levels in the river. There is a very minimal flow in the dry season. The Mara River has been going down for the last few seasons.

NWNL What are today’s impacts of less water available on the people, livestock and wildlife due to this drought? And when completed, how will your assessments be utilized? For instance, will WWF put together a Water Management Plan for the Mara River Basin in the future?

WILLIAM KASANGA WWF sees these low flows impacting people and that depend on and live near the water with their livestock and impacting the wildlife that live in the water. They all depend on water for drinking.

People travel long distances to fetch water – some as far as 10 kilometers. They now can’t even get water from the springs they usually use, because those springs are also dry.

When there’s no water, pastoralists and their cattle that have depended on water available within their area now must trek many kilometers to find water elsewhere. Often they travel very far to get to the main river for water. That causes conflicts.

LOW RIVER FLOWS IMPACT WILDLIFE

Dependence on water by of the Mara River wildlife is well known world-wide, due to the annual migration of hundreds of thousands of wildebeest moving from Tanzania’s Serengeti plains to the Mara savannah to find rains. Many tourists come to witness the spectacle of their dramatic swims across a normally flooded river filled with crocodiles lurking underwater. But now, wildebeests are crossing in below-knee-high water flows of the Mara River.

NWNL Indeed! Our recent footage shows the wildebeest crossing a river that is now merely ankle-deep! The crocodiles, usually lurking unseen underwater, weren’t as successful catching them now because they no longer catch the wildebeest by surprise.

NWNL What are the immediate and long-term impacts of crocodiles not getting the food they need; and of the wildebeest population not being thinned down during this yearly migration?

WILLIAM KASANGA The impetus for this natural movement of wildebeests from Serengeti National Park to the Mara and back has been the subject of spawned many theories regarding this migration. Water is one of the obvious causes. Pasture is another. Of course, there may be other reasons we as humans do not know. But if we put water as the primary cause, then we should study impacts when Mara River is not flowing – which is close to happening now.

We now believe they move elsewhere to find water. Therefore, no we have quite a problem since we have none. This perennial movement of the wildlife twe have seen for years attracts many tourists to our area. If the wildebeest decided to go elsewhere, what would that impact be on the economies of these two countries? Definitely, regret.

Along with these migrations are carnivores that depend and prey upon wildebeest for their meals. As well, the crocodiles that live within the Mara River wait for this annual movement to get their share of meals from the wildebeest as they cross. So the impacts on many species could be a disaster. Thus, WWF wants to ensure that this very important river is flowing – for the benefit of the people, the livestock, and definitely for the wildlife.

LOW RIVERS IMPACT ECONOMIES

NWNL What then would be the impact to the economies if the wildebeest don’t make the crossing and the motivation for tourist safaris wanes?

WILLIAM KASANGA If the crossing of the wildebeest from the Serengeti National Park to the Masai Mara Game Reserve stops, there will be a large economic impact to the economy of these two countries that depend so much on the money brought in by a good number of tourists. Then we collapse. Tanzania and Kenya depend quite a bit from the earnings from tourist industry.

If ever it happened that the wildebeest will not have this annual crossing to the Masai Mara from the Serengeti National Park and back, the current great number of tourists won’t be coming. Then, those earnings from the tourism for the two countries will drop and might disappear. It will certainly create a big impact on the economies of these two countries.

NWNL And, if the economy is hurt, what impact does that have on the political stability. Last night, a farmer said to us, “We really are so glad the United States is fighting terrorism, because we worry here in Tanzania what’s going to happen.”

Do you worry that if the economy weakens due to losses in tourism, will that impact national stability? And then would you then face domestic conflicts, beyond just a few stakeholders looking for water across the river? Could there be international conflict over Mara River water supplies between Kenya and Tanzania?

PASTORALISM v. WILDLIFE CONSERVATION

NWNL In Kenya we saw large herds of skinny cattle coming from Narok and Maasai Mara into Nairobi find greener pastures because these cattle are dying. They’re dying on the road. In this drought, people are moving their cattle very, very long distances into city streets of Nairobi, and from Narok west beyond the Maasai Mara Game Reserve and up onto the Ololoolo Escarpment to find for green pastures.

WILLIAM KASANGA Yes, these livestock keepers will have to find an alternative. Tanzania has the Serengeti National Park and it’s a very large reserve. Kenya’s Maasai Mara is a smaller game reserve where such activity is quite limited. Kenyans keeping livestock with no water and no pasture will naturally move to alternatives to feed their cattle and water their livestock. That poses problems.

That brings up discussion of grading national parks that have been conserved for a very long time. We must decide how to manage the relationship now between the wildlife and livestock. Many wild species have lived here peacefully for ages. Now we also have today’s livestock and the diseases they carry that could greatly impact the wildlife.

NWNL Yes. In Kenya’s Shaba National Park is completely taken over by pastoralists. You can’t take tourists there anymore.

WILLIAM KASANGA Yes. What we are seeing now in this severe drought is massive herds of cattle encroaching on reserves. Pastoralist keepers of livestock are now moving their cattle towards the game reserves for pasture. This has been quite a problem here, so I am sure it is happening on the Kenya side. The experience within the Serengeti National Park is much conflict between the game wardens, who are ensuring that the Mission of the park is observed with no interference, and the local people seeking pastures within these reserves.

SEEKING BALANCED SOLUTIONS

NWNL So what does WWF propose as a solution from lack of water availability?

WILLIAM KASANGA We are trying to solve these problems between livestock, wildlife, and people who depend very much on the water of the Mara River Basin. WWF is using the Mara River Basin Initiative project to find funding from various donors for some studies to see how we can address some of these problems.

We have 3 major studies looking into these issues:

— environmental flows: what we’ve spent and what we’ve done.

— impacts of water resources and the environment and an action plan

— a strategic environmental assessment and a water flow assessment.

If implemented, these 3studies will be our basis for solving these problems.

NWNL Will there be any specific initiatives to come out of these studies? For instance, we’ve heard Amanda Subalusky, a scientist studying the Mara River water flows in Kenya, say that when measuring and studying water levels, there is a point at which it obvious that commercial agriculturalists can’t take any more water because the water is too low.

Have you reached any of those kinds of turning points for policies regulations, initiatives, or other specifics? And if so, will you recommend specific actions and priorities to best address challenges stakeholders and wildebeests now face.

WILLIAM KASANGA We expect these three studies to be taken up at policy level, within Kenya and Tanzania’s institutions of water assessment and measurement for implementation purposes. We believe that some of these water problems must be addressed by the governments.

Regarding assessments of environmental flow, for example, if it is found that within the water’s reached a level that will have an impact on the environment in general, that will ring a warning to whoever using water upstream to regulate.

NWNL Would you say that WWF hopes there’ll be an establishment of a critical low water level that will trigger regulations or restrictions on water extraction upstream. In other words, when water hits a critically low level, then people must stop extracting water.

WILLIAM KASANGA WWF environmental studies will note various levels that signal that a point has been reached when upstream extractions must stop for the sake of life of the environment in general.

NWNL How do you assess the effectiveness of Kenya’s governmental institutions in monitoring and enforcing water extraction? We met with Hugo Wood who started the grass-roots-level Mara River Water Users’ Association.. Who is most like to institute the regulations that are needed when water level reaches a critically low point?

WILLIAM KASANGA Yes, that is a good question. I know Hugo Wood; and WWF has realized the inadequacy of government institutions to monitor and enforce laws pertaining to governance of water resources. For that reason, WWF has built capacity for grass-root-level institutions to be the noisemakers when issues have reached alarming levels. We have confidence in our grass-roots stakeholders, and that if they make noise, their government is likely to respond.

MARA RIVER POLLUTANTS

NWNL How would you assess the water quality of the Mara River today? What pollution issues do you see today in the Mara River?

WILLIAM KASANGA WWF has done water-quality assessments, and our results do not show alarming pollution levels. Yet we see potential threats.

On the Kenyan side, they are concerned about water quality because of there no assistants to monitor the waste from the many safari lodges and some big hotels. That waste could impact water quality of the Mara River.

Down here on the Tanzanian side, we’ve observed pollution from mining and other sources. There is both large-scale industrial mining and small-scale mining. Both are threats; and we can’t seem to catch them at a time when they are polluting. Some small-scale miners use mercury to process their gold, which is transmitted into the Mara River. They wash their gold in the streams, so therefore the mercury is released through that process in the water.

Most of the metal-mining industries are using cyanide. We have had gold-mining cases where just the mining of the rocks causes issues because the rocks oxides and sulfur oxide. When they’re exposed, or when rain falls on them, acidic water flows into the rivers. These are major threats to water quality of the Lower Mara River in Tanzania.

NWNL Does Tanzania share Kenya’s issues of livestock or human effluence polluting the Mara River?

WILLIAM KASANGA In Tanzania most of the basin’s residents live in small settlements, and very few have latrines. So, they defecate within the river’s catchment, and thus human waste is washed into the Mara River. That is challenge to our water quality.

PESTICIDE POLLUTION

NWNL Does the Mara River face pollution from pesticides and other chemicals?

WILLIAM KASANGA We must use them. Tanzania has basically small-scale farmers, who don’t use large amounts of chemicals in fertilizers and pesticides because they only have 2-3 acres on average. As well, they use very few chemicals. Yet, if they keep a little livestock, they produce quite a bit of animal manure.

NWNL Is there a problem with farming right up against the water? Or does Tanzania have regulated barriers between the river and farmland that would create river and stream corridors?

WILLIAM KASANGA Yes, there are regulations for people’s activities along the river-stream corridors. There are local government bylaws, but the problem is in enforcing them.

FARMING DURING DROUGHTS

During dry-season and droughts, most communities can only grow vegetables very close to the river. That allows them to access river water with buckets to irrigate their vegetables.

On the Tanzania side, the Mara River Basin area most cultivated during the dry season is along the periphery of Mara Estuary Swamp. This is a very good area for horticulture and agriculture during the dry season because the water recedes so people living in the area that is dry can grow on the wet soil without irrigating. However, when they grow vegetables, they use pesticides which have a fair impact.

NWNL So, the Mara Estuary offers a variation on flood-recession agriculture, as practiced along Egypt’s Nile River or Ethiopia’s Omo River. In those basins, once the floods recede, people cultivate on the wet banks that are rich with the nutrients.

WILLIAM KASANGA Yet, Tanzania’s Land Act prohibits people or plantings within 60 meters of the river. Also, the Environmental Management Act specifies how many meters away from the river people must observe for many other activities. Most by-laws specify about 30 meters, but enforcement is weak, particularly regarding village laws.

NWNL In Kenya, the Mara River Users Water Associations enforce regulations at the grass-roots level. In Tanzania, like Kenya, the government doesn’t have resources to go into local areas, so concern must come from the grass roots. But today, rural people struggle from day to day to find chakula (Swahili for “food”), so, they don’t care about regulations – especially in times of drought when people really struggle to find chakula. What is needed to change that? Perhaps education? Asking people to self-enforce those laws, especially during droughts is especially difficult.

WILLIAM KASANGA During a time of drought and dry seasons, people feed their families by growing vegetables close to the river, in the wet area close to the river, or wherever they can get the water from the river. But WWF is trying to educate people and train them through the water assessments on how to work with village governments to enforce these laws. But it’s difficult due to people’s dependency on the wet areas, particularly during the droughts.

NWNL Are there any other solutions to relieve that pressure of families needing to find food? Perhaps bore holes? Perhaps capturing water runoff from the roofs, or pumps? What could help resolve that conflict between protecting the river and feeding their families?

WILLIAM KASANGA The goal is to leave the river alone; but for the communities to feed their family they need variable water sources. Yet, as you suggest, in communities where they’ve established water pumps through rainfall harvesting, they have water in the dry season and leave the rivers alone.

However, where people depend on river water for domestic purposes, livestock, and small-scale agriculture, they must move if they don’t have an alternative water source.

NWNL So, grassroots solutions to protecting the river and keeping river-stream barriers are water pumps, rain catchment, and re-forestation so the trees hold the water?

WILLIAM KASANGA I would agree,” because that way we can-

NWNL I would agree that the solutions to protecting the corridors, the river ream corridors are to create water pumps and rain catchment infrastructure and reestablish riverine forests.

WILLIAM KASANGA I agree that the solution to community encroachment of the river is to provide water supplies in terms of pump, shallow wells, deep wells or rainfall harvesting – and to ensure that the river edge area is forested.

RIVERINE FORESTS

NWNL We have seen the drought-induced demand for charcoal has decimated critical riverine forests. And now this extreme drought has lowered swamps so people can plant vegetables there. To do so, they’re cutting down the old, big trees along the river, thus losing natural water retention and exacerbating soil erosion.

WILLIAM KASANGA Here we have the same deforestation problems as upstream in the Mau Forest, where the Mara River begins. In both places – the source and outlet of the Mara River – people are cultivating trees for charcoal use and preserving water retention in the swamps. And in both places, it’s critical to preserve the wetlands.

NWNL Where is funding coming from for these initiatives? Your Phase Three is to bring together NGOs to fund and help implement your goals, since governments can’t afford to do so.

WILLIAM KASANGA For the implementation of the studies we have set up a system through the Lake Victoria Basin Commission that was under the East African Community. WWF, Norad [North American Aerospace Defense Command], the USA and Germany would work together in our implementation phase.

NWNL Will WWF coordinate this system?

WILLIAM KASANGA WWF has been on the ground all this time setting up and implementing the Management Plan as the solution. Coordination of funding will be done by the East African Community through the Lake Victoria Basin Commission. That funding for our management strategy and proposed solutions will ensure better future for the Mara River.

TRANSBOUNDARY CHALLENGES

NWNL My last questions concern transboundary governance, since our NWNL project’s focus also includes transboundary issues, such as those between the USA and Canada in the Columbia River Basin.

WILLIAM KASANGA WWF is establishing a transboundary governing committee to work on a grassroots level. Maasai Mara transboundary water users from Tanzania and Kenya meet to discuss their challenges in the managing their Mara River water resources.

Now we hope to establish national Mara River management committees from which we might devise a Transboundary Management Secretariat under the East African Community. That is are future vision.

NWNL So you want to take the current grassroots issues of Kenyan and Tanzanian stakeholders over Mara River issues up to national and international levels under the East African Community?

As you know, the Nile Basin Initiative is trying to establish equitable distribution of water rights. Transboundary cooperation over water rights is a big, big issue world-wide. Such coordination prevents conflict. Interestingly, transboundary water issues throughout history have usually been resolved without too much conflict – probably because water is so necessarily essential. Most often, people acquiesce to say, ‘Okay, let’s come to the table and work together.”

WILLIAM KASANGA Yes, traditionally we’ve seen that water brings people to the table to talk about their water issues. Conflict regarding sharing water resources is not an issue here. Disputes on the use of transboundary water resource issues in many cases have been resolved amicably because of the importance of the resource.

People might think that dwindling water resources in the Third World would result in conflict since it’s such a crucial resource. I believe that people always sit and discuss amicably to agree on proper uses of their shared resources.

NWNL I think these efforts leave people with hope; and I like that.

SHARED FISHERIES

My last question for you came up this morning as we visited one of Musoma’s “Beach Management Units” near the outflow of the Mara River Estuary into Lake Victoria, also called the Mara Swamp.

When we heard about poaching in those fisheries – an illegal consumption of a natural resource – it reminded me of the difficult and illegal transboundary poaching situation in the Lemai Wedge, between Tanzania’s Serengeti NP and Kenya’s Maasai Mara Game Reserve. How might those fisheries here be better managed than they are now?

WILLIAM KASANGA Maybe I should start with the misuse of the resources in the Mara River Estuary. There is vegetation in the Mara Swamp, as well as fisheries and other wildlife there. Since there is no proper management plan for the Mara Swamp to date, people go in to harvest what they want, the way they want, from those natural resources including wildlife, fisheries and the vegetation.

If this uncontrolled harvesting is not taken care of, it will badly affect the swamp itself. Even now it doesn’t function properly. All the waste now goes freely into the Lake Victoria.

WILLIAM KASANGA This poaching and improper harvesting of vegetation signals of the lack of a Management Plan for this very important wetland. If one is established, then proper management of this wetland’s resources would be in place. I’m sure it would end the poaching and misuse and over-harvesting of the vegetation.

AS A MARA RIVER STAKEHOLDER

WILLIAM KASANGA I’m a stakeholder for the Mara. Looking at the Mara this way is very important – but not just for Tanzania and Kenya. The Maasai Mara National Reserve and the Serengeti National Park have become a global ecosystem – the Mara River Basin. Conserving these water resources is to be taken as an issue by all stakeholders – globally – to ensure the Mara Rivers continues to flow for the benefit of people within these two countries and for the benefit of the world.

NWNL That was very poetic – and so very true. The Mara River Basin is an international treasure! Thank you, William.

Posted by NWNL on August 2, 2024.
Transcription edited and condensed for clarity by Alison M. Jones.

WWF’s Mara River Basin Initiatives Mara River Basin