Caught fish, Lake Rweru, Burundi

Ezechiel Bizimana’s catches fish on Burundi’s Lake Rweru in Giteranyi commune. “We used to get 50kg a day, now we barely get 25kg,” said Ezechiel. Climate change, compounded by issues of overfishing, is wreaking havoc for Rweru’s fishers. Increasingly erratic rainfall causes landslides on the bare hillsides surrounding Lake Rweru, causing erosion which leads to sedimentation build up in the lake and harms fish stocks. A UNEP-backed project ‘Adapting to Climate Change in the Lake Victoria Basin (ACC-LVB) is helping farmers and fishers to adopt nature-based solutions to adapt to less predictable weather in Burundi. Farmers are restoring farm land and planting trees among their crops to prevent erosion, while fishers are using less fuel intensive methods of cooking to reduce deforestation, providing further protection of the lake’s precious ecosystem.