Lake Ziway and Abiyata: Troubled waters

Bayush Sisay is not sure how long she will keep on working on. Her income from the small restaurant trade by which she supports her three children has greatly decreased. The 36-year-old-woman earns her livelihood by cooking and boiling fish soup, locally called Asa shorba, in around Lake Ziway, northernmost of the seven Ethiopian Rift Valley lakes, located some 130 km. south of Addis Ababa.

Bayush has her own shack with small seating areas where she serves clients soup, from fishes caught by local youth. Though she has been doing this for the past seven years, earning her livelihoods has become unattainable because of reduced fish catch. “Before the youth used to provide us with tilapia and other types of fish every morning and we cooked it fresh for clients who came to consume on the spot. Now this has become really hard. The fishermen have to go to the far side and bring some in the afternoon, if at all they manage. What they bring us, instead of cooking it fresh, we had to keep it in the refrigerator for the next day,” she says.

The local people and fishermen who have traditionally made their livelihood from the Ziway lake say they are failing to eke out a living and are being forced to switch to other daily labour activities. “Some years before, there was a fairly plentiful supply of fish, we used to transport it using big trucks. Nowadays, the fish is in short supply,” Tamiru Girma, a resident of the area who blames the discharge of effluents from flower farms in the area says.

Those worries are genuine, experts agree. The Oromia Agricultural Research Institute Batu Fishery Research Center head, Lemma Abera says that the fish yield of the lake has reduced from 4500 to 6000 tons in 2016 to about 1,000 tons this year. The decrease is astounding as the primary productivity of the Lake was comparable to the other most productive lakes in Ethiopia. The lake boasted of harbouring six fish species of commercial relevance, of which four are introduced species. Fish is a staple diet of the residents of the five islands that dot the lake, and people living the meadows along the shore.

The Ziway lake is fed by two medium-size rivers which carry an immense volume of water during the spring and summer rains: the Maqi, which comes down from the Guraghe highlands to the north-west and the Katar which drains a large portion of the Arusi plateau directly to the east of the lake. It is drained by the Bulbula which empties into Lake Abijatta. The depth of the lake was 12 meters. Today, it is less than 4 metres, Lemma says. There is a wide agreement that falling water levels, pollution caused by agrochemicals well as the increasing settlement of population in the area are taking their toll on the only non-soda lake and its biodiversity.

Overfishing and environmental damage

Another serious yet less revealed threat looms: overfishing. Over the last decades fishing efforts have been intensified to an alarming degree, in part due to rapid population growth and open access nature of the fishery. The poor fisheries governance and the use of small mesh size, which capture juveniles and breeding stocks have aggravated the situation, causing the stocks to dwindle, experts say.

Increased salinity

Since the Ziway water is suitable for irrigation, peasants and private companies in the area are increasingly pumping it for irrigation, Bekele Wakijira, an expert at the Oromia region environment protection, forest, and climate change authority says. “The lake is now turning into a closed link, meaning the salinity level is increasing because of climate changes and other factors. The flow to Bulbula River is decreasing at an alarming rate and it might discontinue almost immediately,” he explains. Bekele says a wide variety of unregulated chemicals are ending up in the lake. The chemicals mainly from the nearby flower farms are of concern because many have properties have devastating effects in animals and people, he says.

Water hyacinth

During the past four years, a new threat to the lake’s welfare has emerged after vast tracks of the lake has been conquered by water hyacinth, known in Ethiopia as Emboch. The invasive plant is spreading quickly, threatening the ecosystem, and the survival of the people living in the area, according to Lemma Abera. The aquatic weed is also plaguing Lake Tana, the largest lake in Ethiopia and the Koka Reservoir, a shallow artificial lake.

“This is distressing. Lake Ziway and the other lakes of the Rift Valley are the second important nesting sites in all of Africa for the great white pelican. Losing this waterbody means not only losing a tourist attraction but really bad for the local ecosystem. The lakes are interrelated, damage at one site does mean that damage at all the others,” says Bekele Wakijira.

Lake Ziway is not the only lake that said to be on the verge of dying due to droughts, destruction of wetlands, siltation and invasion by the water hyacinth weed. Another Lake Abiyata, a salt lake water few kilometres from Ziway, is facing a similar fate. The average lake depth has decreased from 14 metres to 2m, Dr. Gemedo Dalle, Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for Ethiopia told Radio Fana on October 2018. Abiyata is famous for attracting numerous birds to its shores and an ideal place for viewing colonies of a pink flamingo. The lake could be dried out in the next two years, according to estimates.

As it now stands, at least two of the Rift Valley’s lakes are disappearing, and the responsible government bodies seem to be passively standing by. Some are coming up with a suggestion to hold accountable the flower farms in the region said to be responsible for the release of untreated water discharge. Bekele Wakijira mentioned the example of the Dutch Sher farm, which lies on 500 hectares, that discharges chemicals into the lake. He said this farm and the other flower farms should treat the water before they pump the wastewater into the lake.

Others say that is only part of the story. The lakes are suffering from thousands of wells and a proliferation of dams and irrigation projects that are diverting water from tributary rivers to grow strawberry, sugarcane and other crops. The experts have called on the government to change course before Ziway and other cherished lakes of the valley face extinction.

Main Image: Around the vicinity of Koka artifical lake, photo by Philippe Compain

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