Monitoring climate change and anthropogenic pressure at Lake Tanganyika

Abstract The African Great Lakes are under threat from global and local environmental challenges including climatic change, water pollution and overfishing. To address those issues, managers need observations based on regularly monitored environmental indicators. However, environmental monitoring of the African Great Lakes is often lacking or not based on harmonised methods. The present manuscript is a case study based on Lake Tanganyika, impacted by climate change and anthropogenic pressure affecting water quality, fisheries and biodiversity changes. The implementation of environmental monitoring has often not been continuous or standardised among bordering countries. This prevents managers from taking data-based decisions and opens a risky field where speculation may overcome a rational approach. Long-term monitoring observations are essential to guide management measures to adapt to climate changes and decrease, whenever possible, unfavourable human impact on the Great Lake environment. A regionally standardised long-term monitoring programme is proposed. The sustainability of such monitoring requires that it remains inexpensive and focuses on a few essential parameters. Its strength would be its uninterrupted implementation. Setting up a long-term integrated monitoring programme is also a goal of the Lake Tanganyika Authorities (LTA) with mandated national authorities and stakeholders. A Lake Tanganyika Regional Integrated Monitoring Programme (LTRIEMP) needs to be widely encouraged and supported to ensure its sustainability. General principles from the Lake Tanganyika case study could be useful to develop a wider harmonised sustainable long-term regional monitoring network of the African Great Lakes in a multi-lakes collaborative approach.