We need to step up fight to protect water bodies

This week, this newspaper highlighted the plight of the people living along River Sironko. According to the story, farmers in both Sironko and Bulambuli districts have this year lost several acres of agricultural land, crops, and animals due to floods, prolonged drought, or changes in rainfall patterns.

Experts blame it on human activity along the banks of River Sironko that culminates in diversions of water for irrigation purposes. The river, which is one of the freshwater ecosystems around Mt Elgon, now struggles to flow due to siltation, pollution and degradation as it makes its way into Lake Kyoga. The locals, mostly youth, engage in sand mining.
But the situation is not unique to the Mt Elgon area. All over the country, individuals and companies have encroached on buffer zones, including water catchment areas. These have increasingly come under threat, which calls for urgent intervention by the different stakeholders.

A buffer zone is an area designated for environmental protection, and anyone putting up a permanent structure in a 200-metre buffer zone needs permission from the National Environment Management Authority (Nema).
But the National Environment Management Act has been reduced to a mere document without significance by individuals who have built in these protected areas with impunity. 

Besides removing pollutants from surface runoff – water running on the ground surface when excess rainwater can no longer sufficiently rapidly infiltrate in the soil – buffer zones have a number of benefits associated with maintaining large areas of natural vegetation.
A 2015 report by Nema indicates that the most affected protected arears have been used for human activity such as farming, construction of structures and dumping of waste.

In 2020, Nema embarked on an exercise to demarcate the 200m buffer zone around Lake Victoria in Jinja District. Concrete pillars were raised to identify the lake buffer. The environment protection body needs to repeat this exercise countrywide such that people have no excuse to encroach on these protected areas.
We also need to ensure the law is implemented without favouring anyone. A lot has been done to ensure these water bodies are protected; yet some individuals, by virtue of their positions in society and wealth, bulldoze their way around these regulations.

Also, government needs to put its foot down and cancels titles and leases for encroachers on protected areas. 
Finally, the government needs to commit deliberate investments towards wetland preservation and restoration.