Concerted efforts by all stakeholders hold key in the war against deteriorating ecological changes, a senior Nyeri county official has said. Addressing environmentalists during this year’s World Environment Day celebrations at the Wambugu Farm, County Climate Change Director Yvonne Mathenge said climate mitigation efforts needed a multi-pronged approach by all stakeholders to achieve meaningful success.
She noted that with Nyeri currently having at least 52 per cent of its land mass being ASAL, there was an urgent need to educate the community on the need to take an active role in mitigation measures against environmental degradation.
“All our stakeholders mean a lot to us in efforts in regard to ensuring our environment is conserved and our community is resilient in matters of climate change. When we talk about planetary crisis, climate change and pollution and biodiversity, we need to reflect and go back and do what every one of us is required to do in combating this crisis,” she said.
Ms Mathenge who had earlier taken part in a tree planting exercise at Ngangarithi Primary School also stressed on the need of the public to ensure they undertake additional measures such as planting drought resistant crops to cushion them against hunger in the event they lose their entire crop due to failed rains.
“If an assessment was to be done today in Nyeri, more than 50 per cent of the land is arid and we have other sections in the high potential area that are degraded. Let us take up this opportunity as individuals, community and as institutions and know that we have a responsibility even beyond planting trees. We need to ensure we come up with the measures that will cushion us against the prospects of losing our crops to climate induced factors such as drought,” she said.
County Meteorological Services Director John Muiruri advised the members of the public to be at the forefront during the implementation of environmental conservation measures to shield them from ravages of erratic weather patterns. The official noted that changing weather patterns posed serious challenges to millions of livelihoods in Kenya with frequent failed harvests due to shortage of rains.
He also hinted to farmers in the county of the possibility of realizing lower yields following the devastating long rains that swept away most of their crops.
“Now that we are celebrating the World Environmental Day, we are also dealing with mitigating climatic conditions. It is important to know that when we are dealing with the environment, we are doing the same with climate change and this is something which is beyond Nyeri County,” he explained.
In May last year Ms Mathenge said the aftermath of the long dry spell that was experienced in the country resulting in drying up of rivers and depressed yields on major cash crops such as tea and coffee was a wakeup call for urgent intervention measures in addressing challenges posed by climate change.
She said the county had begun undertaking a Participatory Climate Risk Assessment Change (PCRA) in all the 30 wards to identify existing climate change risks in each locality in order to come up with workable mitigation and adaptation measures.
“Climate change is bad and this has been witnessed by the long drought that we had and the failed crops. And also, when we get into the highlands, we’ve had very low yields for crops that were otherwise doing very well particularly coffee and tea. I think these were the biggest indicators and if you have the highlands affected you can only imagine what the semi-arid areas are going through. This is evidenced by the high number of water conflicts that the Water Department had to solve among various communities because there was not enough flow of water,” she said.
At the time the Department of Water, Environment and Climate Change had already conducted PCRA meetings in all the 30 wards. There were a total of 20 members who formed part of the ward Climate Change committee members including representatives from the interest groups, community group members, government officers, and private organizations.
Deliberations from the meetings were to be consolidated into a common document that would form the basis of the County’s Climate Action Plan. The plan was among others intended to highlight the programs and projects that will be prioritized as far as dealing with climate change is concerned.
World Environment Day shines a spotlight on pressing environmental challenges. Each year, during celebrations to mark World Environment Day choses a distinct theme to tackle issues like climate change, global warming, and deforestation.
The theme for this year is – Land restoration, desertification and drought resilience. In 2023 the celebrations focused on solutions to plastic pollution while in 2022, the theme was ‘Only One Earth’ with emphasis on the need to bring people and nature back into balance.
According to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, up to 40 per cent of the planet’s land is degraded, directly affecting half of the global population. The global body warns that without urgent action, droughts may affect over three-quarters of the world’s population by 2050.