Disappearing Streams and Rivers Affecting the Social and Economic Development of Society

Societies have lost a number of rivers and streams due to poor farming methods along the river banks. This has impacted negatively on the livelihoods of such societies that depended on these rivers for social and economic survival.

A disappearing river also referred to as an influent stream is a river or stream which loses water while moving downstream.

Growing up in villages was a lot of fun back in the days, where boys and girls would swim in the open flowing streams, went gathering firewood in the forests together. Fostered friendship and widened their social networks.

Such meet ups helped the youths to commune together and did a number of activities together, digging in groups, harvesting in groups, slashing in groups, irrigating of gardens in groups, which improved on the harvest and homes never lacked food.

Granaries were constructed for storage of food for future use, only the excess was sold. Those who did not own them were forced by their peers to put up such storage facilities.

The process of losing water from a river is as a result of numerous factors that range from numerous natural conditions like floods, over pumping, deforestation, vigorous farming around the water banks among others.

The cutting down of the natural vegetation cover along river valleys for firewood, and not replacing the tress is another negative impact. It has led to soil erosion and washing away of the rivers.

The number of disappearing streams has gone up due to greed reflected by excessive deforestation for construction of houses, over cultivation on the river banks and excessive pumping of water from the streams.

During the 60^th independence day celebrations, President Yoweri Museveni called upon Ugandans to develop a culture of raising capital collectively in order to make a meaningful impact in making big investments.

“Ugandans need to develop the culture of raising joint capital, collective saving is important. That is how capitalists develop their countries by floating shares and raising capital and do big investments and ventures that they could not do individually,” said President Museveni.

In the same way the youths need to go back to work on preserving the environment by practicing afforestation, good farming methods among others if they are to make meaningful developments and impacts.