CBC News
- Margaret Evans
Climate change is tilting the balance of nature for Kenya’s Lake Nakuru,
setting off a whole house of cards in a place that once had a reputation
of unparalleled beauty.
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Jean-François Bisson/CBC
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Shirtless young men can be glimpsed through a forest of dead trees, wading through chest-deep water with fishing nets trailing behind them.
Squadrons of pelicans float along what used to be streets in a slow-motion display of synchronized swimming, dipping their heads under water as one to scoop up dinner in their pouches.
And cormorants perch on the walls of gutted houses half underwater.
Lake Nakuru is one of a string of lakes in the Great Rift Valley where climate change is blamed for unprecedented rainfall over the past decade and flooding that has displaced thousands.
“When I came here I was very happy,” 51-year-old Jane Wanjiru said as she was seated in the front of a boat taking us from the new shoreline to the home she lost to rising water in the spring of 2020.
“Because it was mine,” she said. “I opened my own gate. My children were playing in my own compound.
“We thought [then] after six months or three months the water will go back.”
But it stayed, sinking her dreams.
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Jane Wanjiru, left, and her friend, Peninah Muthoni, are still
waiting for government help more than a year after their homes were
submerged in floods that affected hundreds of families near Lake
Nakuru, Kenya. (Margaret Evans/CBC)
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She was able to afford it by joining a savings group supported by an NGO called Muungano wa Wanavijiji (Federation of Slum Dwellers). It helps make loans more accessible to the urban poor.
Wanjiru is devastated by what’s happened.
“When you come from very low and then you get something that you feel you are proud of it, and then a disaster like this comes, you feel very bad. Very bad.”
Especially when there’s little, if any, hope of compensation in sight. If government money does arrive, it will likely go toward repairing infrastructure such as downed power lines and a sewage treatment plant also under water.
How flooding and rising water levels have displaced wildlife and affected tourism at Lake Nakuru. 59sec
In the same part of Mwariki, 173 households lost their properties, most like Wanjiru having saved for years, pooling their resources in order to buy a plot of land they would divide between them.
“We are facing a lot of problems,” Joseph Oyawa, assistant chief for the area affected by the flooding, said as he was sitting in a small hut with a tin roof and rain pounding down on it.
“We don’t have houses for them to stay. It’s a problem of housing,” he said. “Most of them were not employed. They were just casual labourers.”
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Joseph Oyawa, assistant chief of Mwariki Parkview, says the area
is facing a lot of problems. (Jean-François Bisson/CBC)
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Oyawa remembers the days when Lake Nakuru almost ran dry in the early 1970s.
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“The [wildlife] reserve to the south, they’re complaining there’s not space enough for the habitat of the animals there because of the swelling of the lake,” said Oyawa.
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Young men have felt emboldened to try fishing in the expanded
Lake Nakuru but some studies indicate the fish they’re catching
have elevated levels of heavy metals.
(Margaret Evans/CBC) |
Lake Nakuru National Park, recognized as a UNESCO world heritage site in 2011 for its biodiversity, used to encompass the entire lake. But it’s now expanded beyond the park’s borders.
It’s one reason so many young men feel emboldened to try their hand at fishing. The lines about where legal fishing is allowed have blurred. In the past, the Kenyan Wildlife Service limited it within the park.
“Those youth have absolutely zero source of livelihood,” said local ecologist Jackson Raini. Three new species of fish have appeared in the lake in recent years, one theory being that they’d been swept in from nearby pond fisheries.
“But some studies we’ve conducted indicate that the fish have a fairly elevated concentration of heavy metals especially chromium and lead, which are above the World Health Organization standards,” he said.
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Local ecologist Jackson Raini says what’s happening at Lake
Nakuru is an example of the kind of chain reaction climate change
can set off. (Jean-François Bisson/CBC) |
And hippos and flamingos have been drawn to the damaged sewage treatment plant, and so closer to human settlements, by algae growing in the sewer line.
Raini said what’s happening in and around Lake Nakuru is an example of the kind of chain reaction climate change can set off.
Why don’t the flamingos come to Lake Nakuru the way they used to? 1min
He started working at the lake in the early 1990s and stayed because of all it had to offer. It is recognized by an international treaty signed in the 1970s as a wetland of international importance.
“Just bursting [with] life. Millions of flamingos, you know, flying. Pelicans, cormorants, the kind of variety that was simply inspiring,” said Raini.
But the flooding has changed the ecology of the lake, with runoff and rains diluting its salinity and affecting the algae flamingos like to feed on.
“This algae disappeared almost completely,” he said. “And that really interfered with the basic food chain. So the flamingos have reduced in numbers from the millions that we used to see earlier to now where you just see a few hundred.”
Massive deforestation caused by industry upstream has contributed, he said, and a shifting of the tectonic plates in the Rift Valley is thought to be possibly impacting groundwater levels.
But like many scientists, Raini said climate change is the amplifier, changing destinies.
The Nakuru Lake National Park is the second most important in terms of tourism dollars in Kenya, but it’s also having to adapt to a new reality.
Safari roads around the lake have been washed out and available habitat for wild animals like lions, baboons, giraffes and rhinos has shrunk.
Raini said projections suggest that the next 10 years in this part of Kenya are set to get even wetter.
“We have seen that the groundwater levels have risen by eight to 10 metres. So that means that the catchment area is super saturated, that any more additional water we get from the effects of climate change is not likely to percolate. It’s actually likely to spread further and cause more damage, especially at local communities.”
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Safari roads around Lake Nakuru have been washed out and
available habitat for wild animals like baboons, water buffalo and
giraffes has shrunk. (Jean-François Bisson/CBC)
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Help responding and adapting to the changing climate has been one of the main demands from developing countries including Kenya at successive UN climate conferences like the one in Glasgow in November.
The connection is not lost on those in Mwariki still hoping someone somewhere might care about what they’ve lost.
“This thing is happening all across the world,” said David Kahoro Kiragu, a local elder who lost his small subsistence farm in the flooding last year.
“But we are blaming people because they have interfered with the environment, especially even the other [Western or developed] countries because of industries and all of this.”
Sixty-year-old Kiragu and his family were initially housed by a church in a classroom. But when school started, they had to move and they’re now accepting charity from a friend of the family.
“We are actually internally displaced and we are suffering in one way or another,” said Kiragu.
Both Kiragu and Wanjiru say they’ve been ignored by their own government at the county and federal levels, and both say they feel too old to start over again in such harsh conditions.
“No one talks to us,” said Wanjiru. “Now we have become hopeless.”
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'We are blaming people because they have interfered with the
environment,' says local elder David Kahoro Kiragu, front,
referring in particular to developed countries and industry.
(Margaret Evans/CBC)
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But there is no suggestion that is likely to happen any time soon.
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Storks perch atop the roof of a home submerged by flooding near
Lake Nakuru. (Margaret Evans/CBC)
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“They need to be told that there are some people on the ground suffering.”
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