Environment Forum

From S.African water politics to “scramble for fish” in Lake Victoria

Kenyan blogger Juliana Rotich is the editor of Green Global Voices, which monitors citizen media in the developing world, and is a regular contributor to this page. Thomson Reuters is not responsible for the content – the views are the author’s alone.

African bloggers have been highlighting water related issues, from the politics in South Africa that led to suspension of a water quality expert, new devices for collecting and cleaning water, to the ‘scramble for fish’ in the East African lake region.
We start with South Africa where the blog Urbansprout highlights the suspension of Dr. Anthony Turton.

Dr Turton is a researcher who was set to deliver a presentation at the conference “Science Real and Relevant” in Pretoria. He was barred from delivering the presentation, and later suspended by The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The blogger includes the presumed reason for his suspension as communicated by the CSIR, but also looks at the content of  Dr. Turton’s paper [pdf on environment.co.za], noting…

“Taking a brief look at Dr Turton’s paper, he argues that a lack of investment in science, engineering and technology (SET) since the early 1990′s, the termination of important research projects and the shift to a contract driven income model has had a “catastrophic effect” on our national scientific capacity to deal with the technical challenges our water quality is facing.”