 |
The African paradise ravaged by roses
Lake Naivasha in Kenya is where
most of the flowers bought on
Valentine's Day are grown. As part
of the CPU's environmental reporting
course in February, Ochieng' Ogodo
and John Vidal filed this report on
the ecological and human costs.
Thirty years ago, hippos and Masai
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 square
kilometres, shrank last year to about 75%
of its 1982 size 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 hills around,
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 an African Aral sea - a
turbid muddy pond.
The most visible changes to the lake in
the last 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
50sq kilometres of land around the lake
in the open and under 2,000ha of
plastic.
Dr. David Harper, senior lecturer at the
UK's Leicester University, who has studied
Naivasha for 20 years, says that it is
now being sacrificed "for unrestrained
commerce". On top of the flower farms,
alien species like the Nile perch, crayfish
and water hyacinth have been introduced
deliberately or accidentally, he says and
have have profoundly changed
Naivasha's underwater stability.
"We are all sacrificing the lake to keep
increasing our standards of living and our
lifestyles," he says. "Naivasha is not just
any lake. It was then 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. Britain imported 18,000
tonnes of flowers from Kenya in 2005,
nearly twice what it did in 2001. One in
three of the roses on sale in Europe on St
Valentine's Day were air freighted 6,000
km from Kenya, and many of them from
Naivasha, the world centre of cut flowers.
There are no publicly available figures
for how much water the companies
extract from the lake but they are conservatively
estimated to take at least 20,000
cubic metres of water a day on average.
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 overabstraction
of water is now stretching the
lake to its limits. "Last year, we could walk
right into the heart of the lake through the
mud. We are literally watching over the
lake as it makes its last kicks," said a
security guard at one of the biggest
flower farms.
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. It's
not just the water that they extract. Nearly
40,000 people work directly 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 for Britain", he says.
Demand for meat has also rocketed.
This is mostly provided by pastoralists,
who have increased the size of their
herds, with the result there is now massive
erosion in the catchments area. The
earth that now 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 ten or 15
years. The companies will not be able to
grow flowers well before then because
the water will become too alkaline.
"They are shooting themselves in the
foot", he says.
It has also encouraged over-fishing
even as stocks are falling. John
Onyango, a fisherman, says many of the
companies have no sewerage whatever
and simply dump raw effluent and chemicals
into the lake. "Lots of fish are dying
as a result. I can not get enough fish
compared to three years ago. Now I can
only manage to catch between 15 and
20 small ones a day."
"There is a real danger that the Rift valley
lakes like Naivasha] will dry up. You
can see that conflict will break out:
Kenya needs to understand what is the
real cost of a poor environment," assistant
minister of finance, Peter Kenneth,
himself a flower farmer near Nairobi,
says.
The town of Naivasha has hardly
benefited from the farms, says the
mayor, Musa Gita. "The population
influx has stressed us in terms of garbage
collection, sanitation, schools, electricity,
hospitals and roads. It has led to a scramble
for the few existing social amenities.
"The flower farms do not house their
workers. All the farmers do is have cheap
labour and send their workers for the
council to take care of. That way, they do
not have to worry about sanitation, hospitals
or electricity," he says.
He said the human influx has also
affected education and crime. "One
school now has 2,800 pupils. Naivasha
has more rape cases and sexual assaults
than any other town in the country including
the capital, Nairobi. Barely a day
passes without one or two cases of child
assaults or rapes. This is because most
mothers work at the farms and leave their
children under the care of old women for
a small fee," said Gitau.
Gitau says that the farms owe the council
more than Ksh70million, funds that
would go a long way to improving a town
that can offer barely any services. "Efforts
to make them pay have been fruitless. We
are frustrated by a small clique in the government.
The flower industry is a lucrative
business with big money. The same
money is given to politicians and top government officials as kickbacks making
the farmers untouchable," he said. But the
flower farms of Lake Naivasha have no
need to take the lake water, says Dr.
Njoroge Mungai, the CEO of the18 hectare
Mangana flower farm on the outskirts of
Nairobi. All its 34 greenhouses are fitted
with gutters to gather rainwater which is led
into six reservoirs.
The roses are grown in raised beds,
which trap excess water that is led to a special
reservoir and recycled back. The farm
has ten boreholes but they are never used.
"Flower farming can be sustainable", says
Dr Mungai. "We never use the bore holes
because we rely on the rainwater and
every time we empty the reservoirs, the
rain fills them up. This is also why rarely use
the river water."
Dr. Julius Kipng'etich, director of the
Kenyan Wildlife Service which controls
much of the water supply of Kenya, fears
that the situation cannot go on.
"[The flower farms] abuse the water. For a
water-stressed country like Kenya we have
to ask ourselves 'is it a sustainable industry'?
It is a real challenge for us."
This report first appeared in the February
14, 2007 edition of The Guardian,
London.
|
