naturalfeature:lake turkana

Ethiopia, Kenya fail with Lake Turkana UNESCO world heritage site — Quartz Africa
▻https://qz.com/africa/1324511/ethiopia-kenya-fail-with-lake-turkana-unesco-world-heritage-site

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Over the years – despite annual exchanges between the World Heritage Committee, Kenya and Ethiopia – Ethiopia has not acted on the various requests issued by the Committee, continuing with development projects without conducting a strategic environmental assessment. The filling of Gibe III’s vast reservoir was completed in December 2016 and the full water demands and downstream effects of irrigation schemes are still not known.

Kenya too has been lax. It hasn’t implemented recommendations to deal with poaching, illegal fishing, and livestock grazing in the Lake Turkana National Parks.

For the last couple of years the committee has expressed regrets, included notes, and made requests from both countries, but there have been no decisions in tackling the lake’s threats.

In its most recent session, the committee warned that the Gibe III dam had already heavily disrupted the lake’s seasonal patterns, and that this would adversely affect the fish population and the livelihoods of local fishing communities.

As a result, it was declared that Lake Turkana National Parks’ outstanding universal values are in danger and it was decided that the site should be inscribed on the List of World Heritage in danger.

#Lac_Turkana #Grand_barrage #Gibe_III #plantations #Ethiopie #Kenya

Is Violence Declining Because We’re Evolving More Patience? - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/is-violence-declining-because-were-evolving-more-patience

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“Forms of impulsive behaviors involve discounting of future consequences, including both rewards and punishments. Violence is often impulsive.”Photograph by doble.d / GettySomething like 10,000 years ago, near Lake Turkana in Kenya, a group of hunter-gathers went on a raid, sparing a few young men and women to take as the spoils of victory. At the scene were dozens of corpses whose bones contain evidence of what took place: lodged arrows, head and body trauma from different types of clubs, and crushed skulls. The remains of one female victim, who was evidently pregnant, leave little room for doubt that this was a gruesome massacre—and possibly the earliest case of organized warfare among humans. What researchers found there was “unique,” wrote Marta Mirzaon Lahr, a Cambridge evolutionary (...)

CITIES AND MEMORY

What is Cities & Memory?
Remixing the world, one sound at a time
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Cities and Memory is a global field recording & sound art work that presents both the present reality of a place, but also its imagined, alternative counterpart – remixing the world, one sound at at time.

Every faithful field recording document on the sound map is accompanied by a reworking, a processing or an interpretation that imagines that place and time as somewhere else, somewhere new.

The listener can choose to explore locations through their actual sounds, to explore reimagined interpretations of what those places could be – or to flip between the two different sound worlds at leisure.

A world of sounds
There are currently more than 700 sounds featured on the sound map, spread over more than 40 countries.

The sounds cover parts of the world as diverse as the hubbub of San Francisco’s main station, traditional fishing songs on Lake Turkana, the sound of computer data centres in Birmingham, spiritual temple chanting in New Taipei City or the hum of the vaporetto engines in Venice.

The sonic reimaginings or reinterpretations can take any form, and include musical versions, slabs of ambient music, rhythm-driven electronica tracks, vocal cut-ups, abstract noise pieces, subtle EQing and effects, layering of different location sounds and much more.

The project is completely open to submissions from field recordists, sound artists, musicians or anyone with an interest in exploring sound worldwide – more than 150 contributors have got involved so far.

▻https://audioboom.com/channel/citiesandmemory

Ethiopia: stealing the Omo Valley, destroying its ancient Peoples - The Ecologist
▻http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2754229/ethiopia_stealing_the_omo_valley_destroying_its_ancient_peoples.html

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A land grab twice the size of France is under way in Ethiopia, as the government pursues the wholesale seizure if indigenous lands to turn them over to dams and plantations for sugar, palm oil, cotton and biofuels run by foreign corporations, destroying ancient cultures and turning Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake, into a new Aral Sea.

#éthiopie #terres #barrage #peuples_autochtones #agrobusiness

Ethiopia dam will turn Lake Turkana into ’endless battlefield’, locals warn | Global development | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jan/13/ethiopia-gibe-iii-dam-kenya

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The downstream impact of the dam is hotly contested. Some hydrologists have predicted that Ethiopia’s expansion of water-intensive sugar and cotton plantations on the Omo river, which the Gibe 111 dam allows, could reduce flow to Lake Turkana by up to 70%. This would kill ecosystems and greatly reduce the water level of the lake.

This, says International Rivers, could make the difference between marginal livelihoods and famine for the tens of thousands of already vulnerable people who depend on the lake for their livelihoods.

When told of the possible impact of the project, ethnic groups and communities near the lake predicted widespread conflict, hunger and cultural devastation. “If the Gibe III dam is constructed, the lake will dry up and this will lead to desertification and there will be depletion of resources: there will be no fish, no farming, and low humidity [and less rain]. If that is the case, the community will be finished,” said Sylvester Ekariman, chairman of the council of elders in Kakalel pastoral village.

#grand_barrage #Gibe_III #agrobusiness #agriculture