Climate change, overutilisation dry up Ethiopian lakes
Ethiopia, commonly called the Water Tower of Africa, is one of the African nations endowed with abundant fresh water resources. The country is currently building Africa’s biggest hydroelectric dam, which is expected to generate 6200 MW power and which has been surrounded with controversies over the use of Nile River waters.
Despite being a huge resource of renewable surface and ground freshwater that amounts to 123 billion cubic meters per annum and 2.6 billion cubic meters per annum, Ethiopia is confronting huge challenges of disappearing water bodies owing to climate change and over utilization.
These problems apparently cause similar effects on other African water bodies, like the Lake Chad, which seems to shape other Ethiopia lakes and rivers, especially those in the Rift valley river basin. Zewudu Molla, a farmer who uses water from Lake Ziway (Rift Valley Basin), which is located 160 km south of the Capital Addis Ababa, for irrigation, said extracting water from the lake using his water pump is becoming difficult since water level in the lake is diminishing. There are several other farmers who rely on the lake for irrigation and they are the ones being blamed for the decreasing water level.
Achilli Family | Journeys/Flickr