Lake Nayosha has become Kenya's flower growing center, but this has many social and environmental consequences
Lake Nayusha is one of the lakes of the African Depression in Kenya. The water in some of the depression lakes is alkaline (caustic), not so in Lake Naivasha where it has fresh water and therefore the lake water holds many species of fish, insects, wild horses, waterfowl and raptors. The lake environment is rich in vegetation and as such attracts a wide variety of animals.
Near the lake is a sleepy and dusty town that provides services to fishermen, shepherds and passing tourists, the town receives electricity produced from steam that erupts from the ground, on the shores of the lake some of the famous people of Kenya and the world have built their homes, tourists who are used to seeing nature through the windows of their cars, can sail in the lake and walk on a peninsula called "half- Sahar", "tired and satisfied" the tourists spend the evening and the night in a lodge that bears the signs of the snobbery of British colonialism in a rotting skeleton long ago.
In other words, Lake Naivasha is one of the most coveted places in Kenya. Experienced guides who came to the lake knew how to purchase fish to show the casters the exploits of the loud eagle, this while cruising the lake, at least that was the case until the XNUMXs (twentieth century). Recently - to sail you first have to walk hundreds of meters to the boats - the level of the lake has dropped, fish for display are hard to come by - there simply aren't any.
In the mid-seventies, the flower growers began to arrive at the lake! With the help of irrigation and covering aid from Israel and with the help of know-how and funding from the Netherlands, dozens of farms were established near the lake to grow flowers, most of which are exported to European markets, DRAP, the USA and Japan. About fifty farms exported in 2005 more than 80.000 tons of flowers in exchange for 350 million dollars.
(In the following reference to the environmental cost of the "profit"). To process and grow the flowers, 70.000 workers (unskilled) were hired, half of them women, together with the accompanying services, the flower industry in Kenya supports about a million people. And so - in one day, the human population on the shores of the lake increased by tens of thousands!
Most of the workers (and their families) live in "temporary" camps where the "residences" are built of corrugated iron and cardboard, running water, electricity, toilets, etc... of course there are none.
True, the flower farms provide work in a country plagued by unemployment, a worker earns about $60 per month when the work is on a seasonal daily basis. To supplement the livelihood, a family keeps a number of chickens, or a goat, and grows some corn canes and tfa bushes. For variety (the menu) they borrow fish from the lake, so that in fact the situation of the "flower pickers" relative to the majority of the population... is benign.
So what are we complaining about? We will lament what the flower farms did to the lake, as well as what happens to the farm workers. International organizations are among the vehement opponents of growing flowers, with their main argument being that: "In a drought-stricken country where many of the residents have no way of getting food, it is more correct to grow food for locals than to waste huge amounts of water to send "energy and water" packages abroad , because at the end of the day a flower is the product of a lot of water and energy, despite the relatively high monetary value, it would be right to invest the resources in growing food."
According to the "elders of the generation", since the development of the flower farm, access to the lake has been denied to the residents of the area, residents who lived by fishing or shepherds who watered their herds in the lake. These must go through hedges and fences to reach the water, and this of course creates constant tension with the ranchers. Fishermen claim that the few fish caught have "lost their taste" because of the sewage that reaches the lake from the farms. The fish compared were tilapia species that have almost disappeared. In the words of those "old men of the generation" - "the flower farmers are killing the lake"!
According to the nature authorities: fish tested had a high concentration of toxins. The bird population in the lake is in retreat, around the lake (and on the peninsula) the large mammal populations are affected: numbers of: giraffes, zebras, deer, wildebeest and others are gradually falling.
Elsewhere I have already mentioned that due to deforestation the water sources that feed streams and rivers are dwindling and of course the direct result is a retreat/decrease in the water levels in the lakes. One of the lakes directly affected in this way is Lake Naivasha. The flower farms add to that. Massive pumping of water to water the flowers lowers the water level in the lake, some of the irrigation water that seeps/returns to the lake sweeps away fertilizers and pesticides, so the lake has less water and more fertilizers and pesticides. This is obviously not a healthy situation. The result? Fishermen lose their livelihood... because there are no fish, to "fix" the situation the farmers put carp into the lake. The carp is an alien/invader fish and as such has harmed the local population, on top of that the locals believe that the carp concentrates more pollutants/pesticides in its body and therefore avoids eating it, the damage from pesticides is known to the farm workers as they are busy spraying and vulcanizing without protective equipment and therefore a large number of them suffer from respiratory diseases And many of the stones in the middle of the place are not identified, but their origin is clear.
So what did we have?
One beautiful lake and its special environment that are dying because of flower farms, workers in flower farms who are exploited and poisoned.
Not long ago there was a conference in Nairobi that dealt with global warming, you can add to the factors of warming the emissions of pollutants as a result of flying the flower packages around the world....
Buyers of flowers around the world knew - buyers of "water and energy packages" originating in Kenya knew that the price of flowers is human suffering and death to the lake and its surroundings.
Dr. Assaf Rosenthal
Tour guide/leader in Africa and South America
0505640309 / 077-6172298 for details Tel.
Email assaf@eilatcity.co.il
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My call to destroy the human race was of course sarcastic and is as practical as the whining of these articles that do not really offer a practical alternative to the existing situation.
As far as I know, any claim that includes the phrase "only in the human race" is debunked after serious research - for every human trait, roots (precursors) can be found in the animal world.
It is true that there will always be a debate as to whether the animal is aware of what it is doing when it exhibits "human" behavior, but that is a semantic matter of defining "awareness".
(As there are computational limitations for computers, it may be that the definition of "awareness" is the computational limitation of the brain)
A- True, the damage will always be there, but it can be gifted and minimized,
B - True, it is better to grow an expensive product... except that in the written case the profits are "invested" in Swiss banks.
C - Incorrect, the pollution problems can be solved without "eliminating all the people"
D- Your call for "extermination" is typical of the suicidal tendency that exists only in the human race,
Perhaps because of the increasing density, any ecologist will agree that a large part of the injustices of the human race can be prevented
By preventing uncontrollable population growth, between this and "extermination" there is... a small difference,
And again, it's better to "babble and whine" that might help even a little... for calling for extermination.
I'm pretty tired of this nonsense... no matter what we do, there will be some nature lover who will cry that we harmed nature.
If instead of a flower farm food was grown there then he would cry about exactly the same environmental damage.
That is, if we have to choose between environmental damage that gives a cheap crop (food) versus the same environmental damage that gives an expensive crop (flowers), I think the expensive crop is better because with the proceeds from it we can buy the cheap crop.
Of course, this does not solve the problem of pollution - the problem will probably be solved if we simply remove all the people from there, because environmental whiners will claim that even people who "live with nature" produce waste as long as they eat (damage to animals/plants + sewage) or drink (e.g. the water of plants and plants) or even breathing (carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas).
In short, on behalf of all the whiners about the quality of the environment who care to take care of the commercial environmental poisoners (petroleum industries to name a few), I call for the destruction of the human race immediately to join http://homokaasu.org/killeveryone/default.gas