Resources

Lake Victoria is the second largest freshwater lake in the world, boasting the world’s largest freshwater fishery. Over time, unsustainable fishing and farming practices, as well as increased demand for resources from rapidly growing population, has overwhelmed fisheries that have traditionally supported the basin. A new approach to conservation in the basin—to save families as well as the fish and their habitats—is the Health of People and Environment in the Lake Victoria Basin: Beach Management Units project's work with Beach Management Units.

The Health of People and the Environment in the Lake Victoria Basin (HoPE-LVB) project seeks to reduce threats to biodiversity conservation and ecosystem degradation while simultaneously increasing access to family planning and reproductive health services to improve maternal and child health in project communities in Uganda and Kenya.

Lake Victoria is the world's largest tropical lake and the largest lake in the African Great Lakes region. The lake supports the largest freshwater fishery in the world, producing 1 million tons of fish per year and employing 200,000 people in supporting the livelihoods of 4 million people. The major threats to the lake are deforestation, land use change, wetland degradation and discharge from urban areas, industries and farmlands.

Adaptive management is an ongoing natural resources management process of planning, doing, assessing, learning and adapting, while also applying what was learned to the next iteration of the natural resources management process. Adaptive management facilitates developing and refining a conservation strategy, making efficient management decisions and using research and monitoring to assess accomplishments and inform future iterations of the conservation strategy.

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is working with Pathfinder International, a global reproductive health organization, on an innovative project that simultaneously addresses reproductive health, livelihood and natural resource management needs in a holistic manner. This integrated approach imparts knowledge that is helping people build healthier families and manage the resources on which they depend in ways that will sustain them and local wildlife over the long-term.

In May 2017, the African Great Lakes Conference: Conservation and Development in a Changing Climate was held in Entebbe, Uganda. This conference sought to increase coordination, strengthen capacity, inform policy with science, and promote basin-scale ecosystem management in the region. Because all of the African Great Lakes cross borders, the benefits they offer and the challenges they face are best managed at a basin-wide level.

The HoPE-LVB: Gender Equality project works to promote gender equality in the Lake Victoria basin by training women and young mothers on how to integrate health and conservation practices and facilitating community dialogue sessions around the intersection of gender, sexual and reproductive health and the environment. Their work is empowering women and helps to bridge gender gaps and encourage input and support from all the members of the community.