Using citizen science to enhance water safety awareness in Lake Naivasha Basin
Armed with a scooping net, a sorting tray, dissolved oxygen meter, PH kits and a set of turbidity tubes, John Ngotho heads to the river where he will wade through the stream, scraping the river bed with his boots before using the scooping net to draw living organisms from the water.
This kind of assessment, he says, helps in establishing whether the water is safe enough to accommodate certain insect species that naturally live in a stream.
“Every micro-invertebrate has its own score in a chart that we use in data collection. Once we collect the data, we find the scores which will eventually give us the state of the river. We test the acidity, temperature, dissolved oxygen and water clarity,” said Ngotho.
While local community members may lack the expertise of researchers in data collection, equipping and training them on simple citizen science is increasingly becoming crucial to enhance awareness and behaviour change at the community level.
Ngotho, who is also the chairperson of the Upper Malewa River Water Resource Users Association, has been able to determine “the chemical presence in the river and its cleanliness” using the river health assessment tools their group received from World Wide Fund for Nature Kenya (WWF-Kenya).
Through the partnership with Tesco — a leading horticultural outlet in the United Kingdom — WWF-Kenya donated river health and water quality monitoring equipment worth 1.5 million Kenyan shillings to nine Water Resource Users Associations (WRUA) within Lake Naivasha Basin.
The equipment included scooping nets, sorting trays, dissolved oxygen meters, PH kits and turbidity tubes.
Every WRUA has five trained community-based river health assessment (RHA) individuals.
“They are locals who know the status of their rivers. They collect and share the data with the WWF-Kenya team,” said Ngotho, adding that WRUAs collect the data once a month.
“We have agreed within the basin to collect the data every Wednesday or Thursday of the third week of every month.”
Dr William Ojwang’, Kenya Rift Lakes Programme Manager, WWF-Kenya, said that taking collective action on water using Integrated Water Resources Management principles is important since every form of our economic activities depend on water.
“It is crucial to bring people together to understand the need to take action, reduce abstraction, create awareness and document best practices in waste water management in Kenya for everybody’s consideration. We also want to promote responsible sourcing of water to improve water quality and quantity,” said Dr Ojwang.
Lake Naivasha Basin is also a hotspot of freshwater biodiversity and the lake is a designated Ramsar site, a wetland of international importance.
By Leopold Obi.
