Lake Turkana, formerly Lake Rudolf or simply the Jade Sea is the only desert lake remaining in the world, the third largest in Africa and the sixth largest globally. It has the highest concentration of the famous Nile crocodile, giant hippos 43 fish species.

Of its two adjacent islands, Central Island is a birding area, where birds migrate from Europe during the winter to nest, while South Island is home to feral goats that were once domesticated but ended up being wild after the Elmolo community migrated inland. These two islands are now protected areas.

Lake Turkana is itself a Unesco World Heritage Site, a unique biosphere that is also rich in fossils, the remains of the earliest human beings having been here discovered in Koobi Fora and the adjacent Sibiloi National Park.

One hundred per cent of the water feeding into Lake Turkana comes from the Ethiopian highlands. The planned construction of the Gibe III dam by Ethiopia and a series of dams upstream, coupled with the irregular rain patterns and the daily evaporation of water to the tune of 10mm, will in the long run choke and kill Lake Turkana.

The $1.7 million hydropower project, which began in 2006, is reportedly complete and is projected to deliver more than 1,840MW of power of which Kenya is billed to be the biggest consumer, thus it is no wonder the Kenya government is reluctant to probe all the dangers revolving around this project.

Indeed, this deal has silenced environmentalists even as the survival and livelihoods of the pastoral as well as agro-pastoralist communities hangs in the balance.

I have worked for years to raise the awareness of this issue and the looming danger for the poor rural communities in the area, like my own Elmolo people who are fishermen and rely on Lake Turkana for their survival.

The Elmolo are reputed to be the smallest community in Kenya and possibly Africa, numbering a few thousand people whose language is on the brink of extinction.

Though the controversy surrounding the dam is not new, it would appear the government of Kenya has resigned itself to the fact that it can do nothing about the project despite pressure from environmentalists locally in Kenya and in Ethiopia as well as from the international community.

But it does not take rocket science to see fact that Gibe III will sound the death knell for the lake, which will join the once famous Lake Chad, the Aral Sea and some other lakes globally that are no more.

Of concern to those living along the Omo River Delta in Ethiopia namely the Nyangatom, Dasanach and other’s will be the dam’s interference in the river’s natural flood cycle — because they depend on the fertile silts deposited by the floods for growing maize, sorghum and millet.

They have developed ecologically sound practices such as alternating between pastoralism, fishing and cultivation to protect their environment. The Omo, which is the only permanent river feeding into Lake Turkana, floods in August or September yearly; now Ethiopia proposes to divert its waters to irrigate flower, wheat and sugar plantations.

The United Nations during the 35th annual session of Unesco asked the Ethiopian government to suspend the constructions of Gibe III pending comprehensive environmental impact assessments. The EIA was only done in Ethiopia and Kenya rubber stamped it, throwing its own poor pastoralists under the bus.

The African Resource Working Group did their own study and their detailed report confirms that Gibe III will be the last nail in the coffin of the lake, which the only freshwater mass supporting human beings and livestock in the whole of northern Kenya.

Kenya’s own National Environment Management Authority has warned that the water level in Lake Turkana has dropped by around 30 per cent in the past 12 months, resulted in salinity levels rising sharply, with the attendant risk of fluoride poisoning for communities that use the.

The Kenyan government should be looking at alternative sources of energy like wind and solar that are available in abundance in the northern frontier districts areas and are just waiting to be tapped; they pose little environmental hazard and do not affect the lives of the people of the area.

The Lake Turkana Wind Power Project has great potential and as does the geothermal project in the heart of Rift Valley. Europe is already erecting a million solar plates across the Sahara desert; Kenya can also do the same in the Chalbi and Kaisut deserts.

We need something akin to the Nile Treaty to apply to the use of the Omo waters by Ethiopia and Kenya. We need to ensure that the lake does not eventually die out along with those who depend on it simply because we failed to get into a conversation and agreed as a generation to protect the environment. That is the bedrock of sustainable development.

Lionel Lepalo Gideon is the executive director of the Save Lake Turkana Campaign Project. E-mail: [email protected]