A recent article in the news tells about the Itare Dam, a foreign direct investment dam planned in the Mau Forest that will impact the headwaters of the Mara River. The article claims that the government did not conduct a…
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Upstream Impacts on Lower Mara River
In any shared basin there are upstream and downstream impacts that can affect users of the shared water resources. These impacts, sometimes called “drivers”, range from policy and economic activity, to pollution and diversion actions. The Mau Forest Complex, the largest…
Subsistence Economies on the Mara River
The SELVA team found on our fieldtrip in March 2016, that subsistence communities are the majority of stakeholders in the lower Mara River Basin in Tanzania. Subsistence is an economic term that refers to when a person or people work to…
The Kurya People
The largest ethnic group living in the lower Mara River Basin, Tanzania, are the Kurya People; a Bantu speaking people with possible Nilotic origins. The Kurya are an ethnic minority of about approximately 700,000-1,000,000 people living in a collection of subtribal…
Happy World Mara Day!
Written by: Ana Lemos Thursday, September 15 is world Mara Day– a day that celebrates the Mara River and the world famous Mara landscape. As a nod to the transboundary nature of the Mara River, the 10th Sectoral Council of…
Mara River Basin is a Transboundary Basin
The Mara River Basin stretches across territory in Kenya and Tanzania making it a transboundary basin. There are more than 300 transboundary basins throughout the world. Many of these are shared by just two countries like the Mara. However, even…
Pastoralism in the Mara
The Lower Mara River Basin in Tanzania is home to the Kuria people, a group of people known for pastoralism, similar to the Masai people known throughout Kenya and Tanzania for their cattle culture. There are roughly 800,000 Kuria people…
Posted in agriculture, basin management, communities, culture, environment, Mara River basin, natural resources, SELVA, Tanzania
Deforestation in the Mara River Basin
Deforestation is a global problem that causes myriad problems for wildlife, water, people, climate, you name it. The deforestation has caused erosion into the Mara River, a process by which topsoil and other materials are washed into tributaries and the…
The Great Land Migration and the Mara River
Every year over 2,000,000 animals travel almost 3,000 kilometers between the Masai Mara Natural Reserve in Kenya and the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania every year. This is known as the great migration and is one of the biggest in number of…
Erosion in the Mara River Basin
Erosion is a major challenge to the Mara River Basin, as identified by the Lake Victoria Basin Water Offices (LVBWO) in Mwanza. The SELVA team, working with the Tanzanian Ministry of Water in Dar es Salaam and the LVBWO, looked…
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