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Cameroonian environmentalist participates in Tahoe/Baikal watershed education program

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 16, 2008 at 5:21 am

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Most Americans can fill up a glass with tap water and safely drink it. But there are no faucets where Tantoh Nforba lives and works. He is from the Northwest Province of Cameroon, a rural region of Africa where the World Health Organization estimates that only 44 percent of the population has access to potable water.

The rest of the province’s 1.2 million inhabitants either drink from streams and lakes polluted with human and animal feces, contending with potential disease, or walk up to seven miles to collect clean drinking water from sporadically placed water pumps. The pumps are unreliable: Hard to maintain, they frequently fall into disrepair. And while water flows during the rainy season, many go dry later.

Today, Mr. Nforba has joined a global community stretching from the United States to Russia to Africa dedicated to making potable water more available.

Almost one-fifth of the world’s population lacks consistent access to clean water. The situation is made worse, says the United Nations Environment Program, by the water-intensive farming practices being used to feed the developing world’s exploding population. Nforba’s Northwest Province is 90 percent dependent on farming for survival. Its lack of clean drinking water is exacerbated by agricultural deforestation, aquifer depletion, and soil erosion.

“Water is life,” Nforba says by phone from Cameroon. “The crisis is so high here that people are dying from it every day.”

Last summer, Nforba participated in a unique exchange program:

In the spring of 2007, Nforba applied to the Tahoe-Baikal Institute’s (TBI) Summer Environmental Exchange. TBI, a Lake Tahoe, Calif.-based nonprofit, teaches American and international students about watershed management. Around the world, watersheds can be found in all states of usage, from the pristine waters of Siberia’s Lake Baikal – the world’s oldest, deepest, and largest freshwater lake – to the streams and rivers piped deep beneath cities. TBI hopes to balance human population growth and demands for development with the ecological health of these drainage areas.

Founded in 1992 as a student exchange between the polarized superpowers of the Cold War, TBI began hosting students and professionals from around the world in 1996. Nforba was the institute’s first African participant.

“Having Tantoh in the program was huge,” says TBI’s Jon Green, coordinator of the US program. “He really solidified that TBI’s mission is not just about Tahoe or Baikal – it’s about any watershed, anywhere.”

Find out more by reading the full text of this story from the Christian Science Monitor by clicking here.

May 16, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues