Several seasons ago, the story of Konsu, KatƐ, Wawa and Menu were told, about how they supported hundreds of communities and people living in the armpit of a rural setting in the Kadjebi District of the Oti Region. Although the four were not the only rivers, streams and water sources of the people within their localities, the people’s folklore venerates, revere and treasure these rivers. For the many uses they made of the water- irrigating their farms in the dry season, serves as a source of drinking water for domestic use, source of food as fishing, transportation among other uses.
Over the years, we have seen the effects of the blistering attacks on our water bodies whose beauty have bastardised and crucified in some people’s quest to mine gold, mine sand, farm closer to the water bodies and harvesting the vegetation around our waterbodies. The least said about the Rivers Pra, Ankobra, Tano, Birim among others the better. But can we continue like this into the future. Is this practice of harassing, molesting and struggling our rivers to death sustainable?
Time to Bail Our Waterbodies
We cannot belabour the fact that some of our major river ecosystems have been severely damaged by a multitude of human pressures, such as pollution, damming or overexploitation, and this has become more intense over the past five decades. For instance, the fragmentation of river connecting towns and villages obstructed by illegal miners, has not only interrupted survival routes of many freshwater species, but have resulted in heavy pollution of our water.
The point-source pollution and diffuse pollution, such as pesticides, fertilizers, industrial and household wastes, have also greatly impacted rivers as a result of increasing urbanization and agricultural production. More recently, the threats caused by developers near water sources and in floodplains poses a higher risk, reducing the biodiversity area around rivers sources. These pressures have caused severe effects on the ecosystem, the economy, health of our environment as well and are likely to be exacerbation in the near future by additional pressures such as climate change.
The time to bail our waterbodies from this eminent death may sound strange, but yet it's an urgent call for all to act today to save our dying rivers. Bailing our rivers is not another buzz word but a crucial mission to save all rivers in critical condition.
As valuable as they are to us, bailing our rivers, which has been a concern for the Water Resources Commission and other institutions as well as individual is a burning mission that cannot be put on hold any longer. The urgency of this mission requires all hand on deck approach to salvage our dying rivers.
Critical Action
To put this action into force, we need to critically plan and think through practical ways to invest and take proper care of our rivers and water bodies.
We must cultivate and prevent further destruction of our water bodies to secure, restore and rejuvenate the treasure of our waterbodies.
That said, it is being proposed for everyone to take up the fight to be the active voices and advocates for our waterbodies and to save our rivers from further suffocation.
And we realise that mining in the riverbeds, farming closer to waterbodies as well as emptying our solid, liquid, and toxic waste into our waterbodies is not profitable to anyone, but a harmful and hypocritical venture that would cost us hugely and wipe our ancestry.
We need to tell would be homeowners or estate developers that they cannot continue building on waterways and expect to be spared the troubles of floods and other attendant challenges.
As a people, we understand that we cannot bleed our waterbodies, pollute them in our search for Gold and other minerals and expect God to listen to our prayers. We cannot make cosmetic campaigns about our transgressions and abuse of our environment and escape the damning consequences of our uncaring ways.
You and I should gravely be concerned and act in our small ways to bail our waterbodies from dying from the gaols of our greed, uncaring and incorrect ways and expect everything to be okay.
The opportune time for us to act was yesterday. Today is another chance for us to demonstrate to ourselves and our forebears as well as children unborn that, we are blessed with the good compassion to preserve our common good, our common but valuable water resources.
