Eastern Africa is suffering its worst drought in decades

East Africa is suffering its worst drought in decades. Over 23 million people in seven countries can lose everything. All the experts point to the same culprit: the indiscriminate felling of trees in just 15 years has eroded the Mau forest (Kenya), the real drain of East Africa.

The illegal settlement of over 20,000 families since the 90s, and the resulting deforestation and land use for agriculture, is creating a truly "ecological disaster", according to experts. In just two decades, a quarter of the reserve of 100,000 hectares Mau-have been treeless and "invaded" by settlements.

Before the alarm about the current lack of rain, which has forced water restrictions and power never seen in the entire region, the Government has launched a campaign to relocate the occupants of the nature reserve. So far, efforts have fallen on deaf ears. Mau dwellers refuse to leave the land they say was given them in the past.

And in Africa is that many do not understand why blame deforestation and water shortages, hence the lack of food and the death of livestock. But the truth is that experts agree that deforestation has destroyed the "natural mechanism" that keeps the living ecosystem.

According to a UN report, the importance of the Mau forest for Kenya, Tanzania, Somalia, Uganda, Sudan, Djibouti and even Egypt is the "natural regulation makes the ecosystem of river flows, preventing floods, lack water and reduces soil erosion.

"It rains a lot in Kenya, but only in the rainy season. Then come four months in which not a drop falls," said Christian Lambrechts, the Program office of the UN Environment Program (UNEP) in Nairobi. "It is essential to have a buffer zone, a system for dispensing the water and gradually release into the rivers during the dry season. That buffer zone is the Mau forest," says the expert, who warns that "if it is removed this ecosystem, reducing the moisture in the reserve, resulting in the absence of water during the dry season.
"Elements intrusive"

The UNEP has joined the Government's efforts to save it as "the largest ecosystem in the world of dense foliage. In a few years, UN complaint that has lost more than 25% of its natural species "because of intrusive elements.

Bigger than the reserve of Mount Kenya and the Aberdare Park, the Mau forest feeds six lakes (Lake Victoria, one of the sources of the Nile, Nakuru, Natron, Baringo and Magadi). Furthermore, water is the source of eight wildlife reserves, including the famous Masai Mara and Serengeti, on the border between Kenya and Tanzania. In total, an estimated 10 million people depend directly on the water it contains.

The impact of many seemingly innocent African coal used for cooking and boiling water (source of disease) is chilling, as recalled by Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize and one of the most respected voices in Kenya. "I keep telling people that if they continue destroying the forests, the rivers will dry up and die of hunger and thirst," said recently the leader of the Green Belt Movement, which calls for the resettlement of African forests

But many critics who blame everything on the poorest Africans, those who are in the coal its largest single source of power generation. And is that only 7.5% of the rural population in sub-Saharan Africa have access to electricity. Unless action is radically and immediately, the wood from the trees will remain the largest single source of energy for many African families.