Lake Victoria: Toolkit for Pollution Load Assessment

December 26, 2024

Lake Victoria, sharing its resources between Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, is the most productive freshwater lake. Despite being the source of livelihood for 45 million people, the lake has suffered immensely from a variety of unsustainable human activities over the last five decades. Several studies have been conducted on the lake, however, the information on the pollution load from various sources have been missing.

Centre for Science and Environment in collaboration with National Environmental Management Council (NEMC), Tanzania developed a strategy roadmap in 2023 for managing the water quality of the Lake. The report detailed out contribution of different sources (sewage, effluent, solid waste)in the pollution of the lake taking Mwanza city of Tanzania as a pilot study.

However, since the lake is shared by three countries, there are various other such cities in all three countries where drains/streams/rivers directly discharge the pollutants into the lake. Therefore, identifying and mapping these drains, streams, and rivers is essential for understanding the distribution of discharge points, which is key to categorizing areas that require prioritized interventions. The 2023 report emphasized the lack of available information, including dataon the quantity and quality of wastewater discharged into the lake, both in thepublic domain and with regulatory bodies.

Thus, efforts from all three countries are required to collect and share such information on regular basis. In order to improve water quality of Lake Victoria, developing a management plan for the entire lake basinrather than country-specific measuresis the need of the hour.

Through this toolkit, efforts has been made to provide the methodology for generating and collecting a comprehensive set of baseline data needed to assess the overall water quality of Lake Victoria. The toolkit has also discussed monitoring protocol for the rivers/streams/drains entering into the lake, and the lake itself to determine the effectiveness of the actions taken. 

For more information, you may contact

Ishita Garg
Email: ishita.garg@cseindia.org