Kabaka to promote L. Vic conservation

THE Kabaka of Buganda, Ronald Mutebi, is to spearhead the campaign to revive environmentally friendly cultural practices for the protection of Lake Victoria, reports Gerald Tenywa. This will be done at a cultural festival for the conservation of Lake Victoria at Kisumu in Kenya at the end of this year. The General Secretary of the East African Communities on the Management of Lake Victoria Resources in Kampala, Richard Kimbowa, recently said Mutebi will preside over the occasion. "We had cultural norms, which had good policies of managing the resources in the lake but many of them have been neglected,'' he said. Kimbowa said cultural leaders had widespread influence in the lake basin, which would integrate culture into the conservation of nature. He blamed the colonial and postcolonial governments for failing to recognise the importance of culture towards the sustainable utilisation of the lake. Kimbowa said communities had developed economic ways of utilising the lake. "We have problems like illegal fishing which was not there in the past because the cultural leaders checked malpractice," he said. The lake faces threats like pollution, depletion of fish and the water hyacinth. Ends