Lake Basin Development Authority (LBDA) has organized a side event to the Africa Climate Summit in commemoration of Africa Climate Week.
The three-day event running from September 4 to September 6 will be held at the Lake Basin Mall within Lakeside City.
According to LBDA MD Wyclife Ochiaga, they have rallied stakeholders and Green Champions (18 counties) within the region to organize a side event alongside that which will be happening at the KICC Nairobi between 4th to 8th September.
The Summit, Ochiaga said intends to sensitise the communities around the region on the effects of climate change and how they can mitigate them to be resilient to climate change.
He said they intend to complement what is happening at KICC assuring that they are not running a parallel show but want to bring this Summit closer to the people here in the region.
"A number of issues to be discussed are among others the effects of climate change, how to mitigate and develop resilience."
Within the Region, Ochiaga said they have three water towers, Mau Summit, Mount Elgon and the Cheranganyi.
"Apparently looking at the constituency or counties we have, nationally we have the driest regions around and this is due to effects of climate change and that's why we are bringing the summit closer to sensitize people on what we can do as a community."
The Model they are coming up with on sensitization, the MD said, is that of tapping into the indigenous knowledge from the older generations that is far from boardroom discussions to aid in various policy formulations.
"Our elders, grandmothers and fathers in the village have a lot of knowledge on climate change and because they cannot find their way to the boardrooms, their ideas and knowledge cannot be tapped. By incorporating them, we get to benefit from the knowledge we ordinarily don't have in our boarding ".
He added that this side event will also come up with a report on locally-led climate actions that Lake Basin, other government agencies and partners can implement.
This coming Sunday, Ochiaga noted that they have a Cycling event that will be flagged off at the Lake Basin Mall within Lakeside City ahead of the discussion.
He said the routes have been defined and are available on their social media platform.
This will be done across the counties while at the same time conducting sensitization on climate change.
He said that at each and every stopover, they will be doing tree planting, which will include fruit trees to complement the President’s directive to plant 15 billion trees in the next 10 years.
"As Regional Development Authorities (RDA), we have been mandated to plant 5 billion fruit trees and part of what will be doing is to increase the forest around to have return in the next four and five years".
