THE Konarad-Adenauer-Staftung (KAS)
Project Manager, Ms Stefanie Brinkel, has on Wednesday this week opened a two-
day conference
Speaking during the first day of the
meeting that was done one day before the conference here, the project Manager,
Ms Brinkel said that the conference was attended by over 97 participants from
riparian countries who suffer the common bond on the climate change and
pollution in the lake.
“While Lake Victoria offers a
variety of ecological and socio-economic opportunities, we cannot and do not
want to close our eyes pertaining to the fact that Lake Victoria has undergone
severe changes over time and is threatened by environmental degradation,” said
Ms Brinkel.
She said that
Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung is one of the six Germany political foundations and is
one which organised the conference and has been operating in Tanzania since
1962. It was, however, officially registered in 1964 where in July 1961 Mwalimu
Julius Nyerere made an official visit to the Federal Republic of Germany. His
request to the federal Chancellor was not money or short-term technical
support, rather it was long a long- term solution.
The chancellor assigned Konrad
–Adenauer –Stiftung task to support Mwalimu find an appropriate solution. Ms
Brinkel noted that in 1962 with the support of KAS the Kivukoni College was
inaugurated. The Kivukoni College was ground for leadership and ethics in
Tanganyika.
The key shove of KAS was and is to
promote democracy, sustainable development, good governance, international
relations and regional integration. Lake Victoria is an international water
body that offers the riparian communities a large number of extremely important
environmental services.
Over the past three decades or so,
the lake has come under increasing and considerable pressure from a variety of
interlinked human activities such as overfishing, species introductions,
industrial pollution, eutrophication and sedimentation.
In the conference participants will
examine the root causes for over fishing and pollution in Lake Victoria and
give possible policy options that can help remediate or mitigate the
environmental degradation.
Ms Brinkel added that the Lake is
the second largest freshwater body in the world and the largest lake by area in
Africa. It is a joint resource of Kenya Uganda and Tanzania.
To have representatives from three
states for this event, meant not to be just a meeting but meant to continue in
future to form and strengthen a strong regional exchange of knowledge within
and between the three riparian countries of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
The Konrad-Adenauer- Stiftung
regional program for climate change and energy security, Sub-sahara Africa,
Prof Dr Oliver Ruppel said that the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation with its various
country offices and regional programmes worldwide was already very active in
sub-Saharan Africa, where the challenges related to energy security in times of
a changing climate are particularly pressing.
He said that they had about 15
offices in Africa at the moment and in their European and international
cooperation efforts they aimed at making a contribution.
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