- The 15 billion national tree growing programme seeks to raise tree cover from the current 12.3 per cent to 30 per cent by the year 2032.
- That’s part of the 10-year national landscape and ecosystem restoration strategy coordinated by the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forestry.
Upgrading early warning tell people when to seek high ground for themselves and livestock, increasing resilience.
Kenya is experiencing one of the worst floods in recent years. The current rains can be traced back to the October to December 2023 short rains that uncharacteristically continued into the months of January and February this year.
The extended short rains wet season ran into the current traditional March-April-May long rains season, a clear manifestation of the erratic weather patterns caused by climate change. It is caused by ground and acres if concrete, increasing the risk of flooding due to the existing structures blocking the high precipitation.
It is obvious to all now that weather and climate variability, and accompanying extremes in recent years, in Kenya, the region and globally are undeniably due to man-made climate change.
As we may all recall, the current floods are happening just months after the recent long drought, the worst in over 40 years when we lost lives (priceless) and livelihoods estimated at estimated at 2.61 million livestock, mostly in Kenya's vulnerable arid and semi-arid lands.
It is not just livestock that succumbed to the devastating drought. Kenya also lost huge amounts of biodiversity that included wildlife and vegetation that provided the much-needed ground cover to hold soil together in times of extreme rainfall, such as this one.
This episode of unprecedented flash floods is directly related to last year's drought in a predictable cyclic pattern of extreme weather events that continue to significantly undermine our socioeconomic progress.
For instance, the long drought brought our livestock sector to its knees. Even before the land and grazing land recovered, the flood waters are not only sweeping away the weak herds and destroying pastures making it hard for the sector to recover. This grim reality is the case in almost all sectors of the economy, with agriculture, health, transport and infrastructure being the most affected.
Not so long ago, it would have been considered a hallucinations imagine our country's education system would be shut down due to extreme rainfall, but it is today’s reality. The Government had to make the difficult decision to postpone reopening of schools primarily to ensure the safety of our learners.
It is out of the growing realities of climate change-induced extreme weather events that the Kenya Kwanza administration has prioritised climate action as a core deliverable in the Bottom-up Economic Transformation Agenda.
It set in motion a series of interventions to raise our country's capacity for mitigation and enhancing our community's resilience while contributing to the wealth and employment agenda by creating green jobs.
The 15 billion national tree growing programme seeks to raise tree cover from the current 12.3 per cent to 30 per cent by the year 2032. That’s part of the 10-year national landscape and ecosystem restoration strategy coordinated by the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forestry. It is an example of a 'whole-of-society, whole-of-Government' initiative that holds the greatest potential for climate action as well as wealth and employment creation.
Of the 15 billion trees to be grown under the programme, 30 per cent will be fruit, fodder and nut species that contribute directly to our country's food and nutritional security, employment creation and enhances the resilience of the livestock sector to extreme weather conditions, including droughts.
At the same time, the government is in the process of transitioning Kenya's troubled linear waste management model into a circular economy where waste will be utilised as raw material in the production of energy and other products including fertilisers.
The shift to circularity as envisioned in the 2022 sustainable waste management law will get rid of the solid waste including non-biodegradable materials that clog drainage and water passages leading to flooding during rainy seasons, particularly in urban areas.
Most importantly, the government is investing in early warning systems that prepare our people, days, weeks and months ahead of extreme weather events such as the heavy rainfall we are experiencing currently to avoid loss of lives and livelihoods.
The government through the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forestry, working with partners, has invested substantially in the strengthening of the early warning capabilities of the Kenya Meteorological Department. It has acquired modern equipment and climate information systems including automatic weather stations.
The broad reform of Kenya's early warning and climate information management includes an ongoing legislative process. It will transform the Kenya Meteorological Department in to a semi-autonomous government entity to enhancing its efficiency.
It is commendable that increasingly, the Kenya Meteorological Department is providing accurate and timely weather and climate information as evidenced in this season. The uptake of this information has also significantly increased in recent months as Kenyans recognise the importance of early warning.
The writer is the government spokesperson