World Council of Churches - Feature
Contact: + 41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363 media@wcc-coe.org For immediate release - 24/05/2007 05:09:17 PM
MELTING ICE CAPS ON MT KENYA AND KILIMANJARO NEED ACTION NOW
By Fredrick Nzwili (*)
"In my childhood, the water was so clear that you could see the hard rock at the bottom. Fishing for trout was so easy. We enjoyed it. When we used our fishing rods, we could see ourselves catching the fish," says Professor Jesse Mugambi, a member of the World Council of Churches (WCC) working group on Climate Change. "But then we started to grow coffee and tea. First the rivers were polluted because of erosion, and then there was no water."
Mugambi, a Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Nairobi who has been at the centre of global debates on climate change, refers to the area around Mt Kenya, which has lost most of its ice-cover due to global warming. Now, from September to March, the rivers previously fed by thawing ice from the mountain dry up. "That is how serious the problem is," he says.
Mugambi presented a paper on "The Impact of Climate Change on Access to Fresh Water" at a church-sponsored conference on water taking place 21-25 May in Entebbe, Uganda. On the shore of Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake, nearly 70 participants including church leaders, theologians, water experts and project coordinators from 25 countries gathered to discuss the role of churches in the face of the water crisis in Africa.
The conference was organized by the Ecumenical Water Network (EWN) in cooperation with the Uganda Joint Christian Council (UJCC), the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) and the Uganda-based Agency for Corporation and Research in Development (ACCORD). The EWN is an initiative of Christian churches, organizations and movements who advocate for water as a human right and work to promote people's access to water through community-based initiatives around the world.
The conference's focus is on water supply and access to water in rural Africa as well as community-based water initiatives, the human right to water and social, political and economic factors around the issue. Conference documents say that over 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa lack access to adequate and safe drinking water. In Uganda, for example, with a population of 28 million people, 32 percent lack access to safe water.
In opening the conference on 21 May, Uganda's Minister for Water and Environment, Mrs Miria Mutagamba, urged churches to educate the people in Africa about the management of water resources. "You have a duty," she said, "You are in the communities, they listen to you. Please help our communities to understand how to use water."
However, as the conference heard presentations on community experiences and best practices, experts warned that the two snow-capped mountains of East Africa, Mt Kenya and Mt Kilimanjaro, are losing the ice on their peaks.
These ice caps feed rivers on their slopes, but with declining ice or none at all, communities living near the streams below will lack adequate water for domestic use or agriculture as the rivers dry up. According to participants at the conference, this is already starting to happen and the survival of communities dependent on this water supply is threatened. Already there is competition for water, pasture and farmland.
The loss of ice on the two mountains is a result of rising global temperatures due to human activities. The UN-sponsored International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says continued "greenhouse effect" will cause an increase in global mean temperatures of 1.4 to 5.8°C by the end of this century. This will account for about 20 percent of the global water scarcity.
"If, through our actions, we are the cause of loss of precipitation on Mt Kenya and Mt Kilimanjaro, we are practically linking the Sahel region with the Kalahari," explains Mugambi. The Sahel is the region south of the Sahara. The Kalahari Desert is in Southern Africa.
"The industrialization of the developed countries has come at a cost to ecology. The majority of the victims are people who are not responsible for global warming," says Mugambi.
The story of Kilimanjaro losing its ice is no secret, according to Seth Kitange, the co-secretary of the Hai District Water Supply, a project supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT). "The result is that the traditional systems of canal irrigation, which existed from pre-colonial days, have no water. This has affected livelihoods," he says.
The slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro, home to half a million people (many of them Lutheran), have also suffered from deforestation. Though these people, according to Kitange, have not caused the ice to melt, they have cut down most of the trees for timber and charcoal, without planting new ones, causing erosion. "When the tree-cover on the land is lost, the economy of the people suffers; the church then suffers because the church is the people," he explains.
Anybody hoping to see the peaks of the mountains fully covered with snow again will have to wait for decades, even if action to save the ice is started now. In this period, according to Mugambi, there could be ecological migrants in East Africa.
"And this is why we must begin now. The best example we can take is of a tree. It takes 50 years for a hardwood to grow to maturity, but it takes five minutes to cut it down. It took millennia for the ice to form on the mountains. It took about 50 years to wipe it out," says Mugambi.
In the Mt Kenya area, Christian communities are coming together to build small dams across most of the rivers and streams around the slopes of the mountain. They hope thus to improve the habitat of local communities and encourage expansion of agricultural production.
In Kilimanjaro, the ELCT is leading a major tree-planting campaign which encourages children of confirmation age, for a period of two years, to plant and care for not less than 10 trees. It is also leading awareness-rai sing programmes about the disappearing tree-cover.
"At different moments in Africa's history - the slave trade, colonialism, South Africa's apartheid - the Church of Jesus has been found standing with those who suffered and were exploited. The role of the church now is to stand with those who are adversely affected by water scarcity," concludes Mugambi.
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(*) Fredrick Nzwili is a freelance journalist from Kenya. He is currently a correspondent for Ecumenical News International (ENI) based in the country's capital, Nairobi.
Media contact during the 21-25 May EWN conference: Maike Gorsboth +49-171-140-7727 Dunstan Ddamulira +256-772-457726
Ecumenical Water Network: http://water.oikoumene.org/
Information on the conference programme and speakers is available as a downloadable PDF file on the WCC website: http://oikoumene.org/fileadmin/files/wcc-main/documents/p4/ewn/single_docs/ programme-entebbe-e.pdf
Opinions expressed in WCC Features do not necessarily reflect WCC policy. This material may be reprinted freely, providing credit is given to the author.
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The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 347 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, from the Methodist Church in Kenya. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.
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