Drained of life

Ochieng Ogodo and John Vidal. The Guardian, Wednesday 14 February 2007 
 

Many of the fresh flowers that will be bought in Britain today are grown on the shores of Lake Naivasha in Kenya. Ochieng Ogodo and John Vidal report on the dire ecological and human costs of Valentine's Day.

Thirty years ago, hippos and Maasai cattle herders shared the shoreline of Lake Naivasha in the Rift Valley of Kenya with the small local community of farmers and fishermen. The lake was judged one of the 10 top sites for birds in the world; its acacia and euphorbia trees were famed for their beauty; and its clear, fresh waters were abundant with fish. The human census in 1969 showed just 27,000 people living in the surrounding areas.

Today, the population is nearly 300,000 and security guards with walkie-talkies patrol the few paths left open for local people and animals to get down to the lake. Naivasha, officially 130 sq km, shrank last year to about 75% of its size in 1982, and the great papyrus swamps that were the breeding grounds for fish have been largely cut down. The undulating hills around the lake have few trees left.

Giraffes, hippos and other wildlife still use Naivasha, but the animals are mostly owned by hotels and lodges, and the only way the locals see them is over high fences. Meanwhile, species of fish and plant alien to the lake are upsetting its ecological balance. The water is murky from the silt that runs off the surrounding hills, and the fish catches are a shadow of what they used to be. In 20 years, say conservationists and ecologists, the lake could be little more than a turbid, muddy pond.

Giant greenhouses

The most visible changes to the lake in the past 30 years, and the cause of much of its problems, are the giant sheds and greenhouses of more than 50 major flower farms that now line its shores, and the settlements of more than 250,000 people who have flooded into the area since the global flower industry moved in. Naivasha is now Europe's prime source of cut flowers and, to a lesser extent, vegetables, which are grown on more than 50 sq km of land around the lake in the open and under 2,000 hectares (4,943 acres) of plastic.

David Harper, a senior lecturer at Leicester University who has studied Naivasha for 20 years, says it is now being sacrificed "for unrestrained commerce". On top of the flower farms, alien species such as the Nile perch, crayfish and water hyacinth have been introduced deliberately or accidentally, he says, and have profoundly changed Naivasha's underwater stability.

"We are all sacrificing the lake to keep increasing our standards of living and our lifestyles," Harper says. "Naivasha is not just any lake. It was beautiful in the 1960s and globally famous. Now it is brown and murky. This deliberate unrestrained commerce can only be compared to the Aral Sea in Russia that dried up in the 1970s."

The climate and high altitude are perfect for floriculture. Picked in the morning, the flowers can be packed, refrigerated and on their way by plane to Britain by the afternoon. The UK imported 18,000 tonnes of flowers from Kenya in 2005, nearly twice the number in 2001. If you buy Valentine's Day roses today in Europe, there is a one in three chance that they will have been flown 6,000km from Kenya, and a pretty good chance that they will be from Naivasha.

There are no publicly available figures on how much water the companies extract from the lake, but they are conservatively estimated to take, on average, at least 20,000 cubic metres of water a day. A survey by a Kenyan school last October found that the maximum depth of the lake was now just 3.7 metres, and that the level was more than three metres below what it was in 1982. Heavy rains have since raised it by nearly a metre.

A combination of climate change - which is increasing the severity and frequency of droughts - and the over-abstraction of water is stretching the lake to its limits. "Last year, we could walk right into the heart of the lake through the mud," says a security guard at one of the flower farms. "We are literally watching over the lake as it makes its last kicks."

The real price of the flowers sent to Britain is incalculable, says one Kenyan conservationist, who asked not to be named following the murder last year of a woman who had fought to save the lake. "What is not taken into account by the companies is that their activities place enormous extra pressure on the lake," he says. "It's not just the water that they extract. Nearly 40,000 people work in the farms around Lake Naivasha, but every job attracts nearly seven other people to the area. We estimate that the new population uses about 750,000 bags of charcoal a year. The forests are being felled to provide fuel for the people growing the flowers."

Demand for meat has also rocketed, and as the pastoralists have increased the size of their herds, soil erosion in the catchments area is increasing. The earth that runs off the hills into the lake is beginning to starve it of oxygen. "At this rate of consumption, we shall lose the lake completely within 10 or 15 years," the conservationist predicts. "The companies will not be able to grow flowers well because the water will become too alkaline. They are shooting themselves in the foot."

The flower farming has also encouraged overfishing, even as stocks are falling. John Onyango, a fisherman, says many of the companies dump raw effluent and chemicals into the lake. "Lots of fish are dying as a result," he says. "I cannot get enough fish, compared to three years ago."

"There is a real danger that the Rift Valley lakes will dry up," says Peter Kenneth, Kenya's assistant minister of finance, and himself a flower farmer near Nairobi. "You can see that conflict will break out. Kenya needs to understand what is the real cost of a poor environment."

Naivasha has hardly benefitted from the farms, says the mayor, Musa Gitau. "The population influx has stressed us in terms of garbage collection, sanitation, schools, electricity, hospitals and roads," he says. "It has led to a scramble for the few existing social amenities. The flower farms do not house their workers. They send their workers for the council to take care of. That way, they do not have to worry about sanitation, hospitals or electricity."(...)

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Ochieng Ogodo is chair of the new Kenya Environment and Science Journalists Association. This article was written from research by Kenyan environment and science journalists Duncan Mboya, Kennedy Obara, Nancu Masthu, Musai Nzau, Duncan Khaemba, Mazera Ndurya, Hellen Misenda, Henry Wahinya, Wanjiru Macharia, Beatrice Obwocha, Mildred Barasa amd Ochieng Ogodo. The article followed a course organised by the Commonwealth Press Union.