Friday, October 18, 2013

Deal with ‘everyday disasters’ to eradicate poverty

Thursday, October 17, 2013
int day eradication povertySmall-scale disasters are so frequent that we can call them routine disasters, everyday disasters. And of course, losses from disasters are also increasing, but it is poor communities that bear the brunt of disasters, they are more likely to be affected by a disaster, and less able to recover. And we expect that climate change will continue raising the frequency and intensity of natural disasters.
These routine and everyday disasters do not attract media interest or government response though they cause major loss of livelihoods. Roads are damaged, children cannot go to school, and homes, crops and livestock are lost.
“These everyday disasters hold development back, they undermine development.To eradicate poverty there needs to be a greater emphasis on reducing disaster risks and reducing their impact on the most vulnerable. We have to improve the resilience of poor communities to disasters”, says John Nduna, General Secretary of ACT, in his message for International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.
The post 2015 development agenda needs to reduce the impact of everyday disasters as well as major disasters. This will help ending crisis-induced poverty and stop people being pushed below the resilience threshold and would enable communities to cope with shocks without being pushed into poverty, says Nduna.
In developing the post 2015 development agenda, ACT Alliance is working to ensure the participation of the people most at risk to ensure that the future development agenda represents the realities of those directly affected by disasters.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Young farmers turn to social media to adapt to climate change.

Young farmers turn to social media to adapt to climate change

Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation - Tue, 16 Jul 2013 10:00 AM
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Farmer Julius Cheruiyot checks his smart phone for advice on adapting his farm to changing climate conditions. THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION/ Caleb Kemboi
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ELDORET, Kenya (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — Julius Cheruiyot has been a farmer since he was 16 years old. Forced to drop out of school because his family was unable to pay the fees, he went to work on his father’s farm in Uasin Gishu county, in Kenya’s Rift Valley region.
Today, Cheruiyot, 32, is a father of three who can afford to feed and educate his family by cultivating his own land.  But as increasingly unpredictable weather in Kenya makes life difficult for subsistence farmers, he has joined a number of younger farmers who are using social media to learn how to cope.
Standing on his 5-acre (2-hectare) plot of land, Cheruiyot pulls out his mobile phone, clicks on a Facebook tab, and logs in to the page of Young Volunteers for the Environment (YVE), a group that posts updates on the latest news about the environment and climate change.
“Social media ... has assisted us a lot,” he says. “(With) the information we receive, we can now know the right time to plant our crops, because sometimes we realise it’s a short rain not a long rain, and end up incurring losses (if we don’t take the right action).”
Changing weather patterns in recent years have affected most farmers in Kenya and other parts of eastern Africa.
Over the past 10 years, Cheruiyot says, he has seen drastic changes in the local climate, whether low rainfall during the planting season or heavy rains at harvest time, resulting in low yields or completely failed harvests.
He learned about Young Volunteers for the Environment at an agricultural exhibition.
“I decided to join the group and since then I have learned (about) various aspects of climate change and how to cope with it as a young farmer,” he explains.
YVE is the Kenyan chapter of a pan-African organisation founded in Togo in 2011. The group is concerned about declining agricultural production, which contributes to food insecurity and poverty in the region. Its goal is to help young farmers understand the best way to practise sustainable farming and increase their productivity.
“(YVE) engages youth across the country in environment and climate change issues that make a positive impact in the life of the community by enabling communities to effectively adapt to the effects of the rapidly changing climate,” according to Emmanuel Serem, the organisation’s president.
ADAPTING TO RISING TEMPERATURES
YVE’s 10 members in the Rift Valley aim to raise public awareness about climate change and how to adapt to rising temperatures in the region, which is known as the country’s bread basket. They educated themselves by attending workshops and conferences organised by environmental organizations.
The group has more than 900 followers on Facebook who access the information shared on the site and have online discussions about farming.
Use of social media networks among young Kenyans is growing rapidly. Most use them for socialising, but YVE sees them as a means to reach young farmers.
Recent changes in weather patterns have affected cereal farmers in parts of the Rift Valley, yet most of them don’t understand what is going on, said Ken Ruto, leader of the North Rift Theatre Ambassadors, another organisation that uses social media to sensitise young people about conservation issues.
“Through social media we have managed to inform young farmers to plant more trees in their farms as a best way to cope with climate change,” said Ruto, whose group is based in Eldoret, in Uasin Gishu county.
The Rift Valley is known for maize and dairy farming. But planting maize every year is an increasing challenge because of irregular rainfall, as well as outbreaks of pest-borne diseases such as maize lethal necrosis, which affected crops in the valley in September 2012 and spread across the country.
YVE advises farmers on the kinds of crops suitable for planting according to changes in weather patterns. Among those it recommends to cope with the weather changes are millet, wheat, potatoes and sorghum. The group explains that rotating crops helps rebalance the acidity and alkalinity of the soil and improve its fertility.
“We have been planting maize since colonial time and this has really affected the production,” said farmer Cosmas Biwott. Following YVE’s advice, he switched to potatoes, and is delighted with the result. “It’s doing good and I am expecting a bumper harvest,” he said, laughing.
According to Serem, the president of YVE, farmers are in dire need of good information about changing weather patterns. Some farmers, he said, believe that poor harvests are divine retribution for the violence that wracked parts of the country, including the Rift Valley region, after Kenya’s 2007 general elections.
Serem said he is pleased with the response from farmers to the organisation’s efforts.
PROBLEMS OF ILLITERACY, ACCESS
 “Young farmers (are) commenting and asking more questions,” he said. But he acknowledges that YVE’s services are not available to everyone. Most farmers who access the service use internet-enabled phones. But farmers in remote areas have difficulty accessing the internet, and not all are well versed in social media.
Cosmas Biwott, one young Rift Valley farmer who has used the social media service, warned that the level of illiteracy among many young rural farmers is high.
“The social sites have really assisted us ... to get more information concerning adaptation (to) climate change, but most of the farmers don’t know to use phones or even read the information,” he said. “That’s a big challenge.”
Biwott thinks that farmers in the region would benefit from an information centre equipped with computers and internet access.
Serem said YVE hopes to open offices in every county in the Rift Valley region to reach farmers through forums, field days and exhibitions.
“Eight out of ten people (in the region) are farmers,” he said. “Therefore we need to embrace togetherness for the good of food security in the country.”
Caleb Kemboi is an environmental and climate change reporter based in Eldoret, in Kenya’s Rift Valley.

Monday, July 8, 2013

conservation.

LETS CONSERVE THE ENVIRONMENT!

  No settled family or community has ever called its home place an “environment.” None has ever called its feeling for its home place “biocentric” or “anthropocentric.” None has ever thought of its connection to its home place as “ecological,” deep or shallow. The concepts and insights of the ecologists are of great usefulness in our predicament, and we can hardly escape the need to speak of “ecology” and “ecosystems.” But the terms themselves are culturally sterile. They come from the juiceless, abstract intellectuality of the universities which was invented to disconnect, displace, and disembody the mind. The real names of the environment are the names of rivers and river valleys; creeks, ridges, and mountains; towns and cities; lakes, woodlands, lanes roads, creatures, and people.

And the real name of our connection to this everywhere different and differently named earth is “work.” We are connected by work even to the places where we don’t work, for all places are connected; it is clear by now that we cannot exempt one place from our ruin of another. The name of our proper connection to the earth is “good work,” for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the thing that it makes and the user of the made thing. Good work is always modestly scaled, for it cannot ignore either the nature of individual places or the differences between places, and it always involves a sort of religious humility, for not everything is known. Good work can be defined only in particularity, for it must be defined a little differently for every one of the places and every one of the workers on the earth.

The name of our present society’s connection to the earth is “bad work” – work that is only generally and crudely defined, that enacts a dependence that is ill understood, that enacts no affection and gives no honor. Every one of us is to some extent guilty of this bad work. This guilt does not mean that we must indulge in a lot of breast-beating and confession; it means only that there is much good work to be done by every one of us and that we must begin to do it.”
Wendell Berry



 “When I consider that the nobler animal have been exterminated here - the cougar, the panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, dear, the beaver, the turkey and so forth and so forth, I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed and, as it were, emasculated country... Is it not a maimed and imperfect nature I am conversing with? As if I were to study a tribe of Indians that had lost all it's warriors...I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I hear that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth.”
Henry David Thoreau, The Journal, 1837-1861

 “In every remote corner of the world there are people like Carl Jones and Don Merton who have devoted their lives to saving threatened species. Very often, their determination is all that stands between an endangered species and extinction.
But why do they bother? Does it really matter if the Yangtze river dolphin, or the kakapo, or the northern white rhino, or any other species live on only in scientists' notebooks?
Well, yes, it does. Every animal and plant is an integral part of its environment: even Komodo dragons have a major role to play in maintaining the ecological stability of their delicate island homes. If they disappear, so could many other species. And conservation is very much in tune with our survival. Animals and plants provide us with life-saving drugs and food, they pollinate crops and provide important ingredients or many industrial processes. Ironically, it is often not the big and beautiful creatures, but the ugly and less dramatic ones, that we need most.
Even so, the loss of a few species may seem irrelevant compared to major environmental problems such as global warming or the destruction of the ozone layer. But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we're driving.
There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos, and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.”
Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See
 

Do not tell me you are not a pig!





Your skin is rough and thick
Densed by the subcutaneous you have accumulated
When you gulped what belonged to others
Making them destitute for decades to come
Yet you say you are not a pig!

Your tails is short and twisted
Characteristic of your shrewd and cunning ways
That gave you victory over the weak and poor
Who you oppressed as you made your bounty
Yet you say you are not a pig!

Your nose is an odd snout
Dead to the filth you have submerged yourself in
As you waded the murky waters of corruption and impunity
And caused untold pain to young and old
Yet you say you are not a pig!

Your teeth are rusty and crooked
One wonders how they can even bite
Yet the injury they leave is fatal
Leaving gloom and doom in the land
Yet you say you are not a pig!

When the dance of the people begin
Remember your pig ways are not wanted
No matter how much you try to conceal
You still walk talk and act like a pig
Yet you say you are not a pig!

Your skin is pig and your tail is pig
Your nose is pig and your teeth are pig
Your walk is pig and your talk is pig
I’d be a bigger pig if I continued to listen to you
Don’t you tell me you are not a pig!

RIO GAP


RIO GAP



One of the key obstacles to achieving sustainable development is agreeing who will carry the burden. Stopping environmental degradation requires resources. Some argue those resources could be needed somewhere else, such as eradicating poverty. So it could appear that the need to eradicate poverty and the need to stop environmental degradation are in conflict.
ECO does not buy into this argument.  At all.  Environmental degradation is fast becoming the biggest contributor to increased poverty. If we want to eradicate poverty, then we need to invest also in what is leading to more poverty, which includes fighting environmental degradation.
The more scarce resources become, the more sustainability must be at the center of poverty alleviation. The world has no choice but to choose a path that would combine them.  In fact, many developed and developing countries are already providing a lot of good examples on the national and subnational levels, such as developing efficient public transport that reduces CO2 emissions and at the same time increase mobility and affordability, which is needed for economic development.
Now that governments have agreed as little as they have, given the existing and rather pathetic political will now available, the question is what will they do when they go back home. The current conference document, with all its weaknesses, has nonetheless indicated many potential opportunities for further action. There are no hard numerical commitments and actions in the text, but it provides processes for governments to develop these commitments and actions. Such processes include:
  •  establishing an intergovernmental high level political forum that will follow up on the implementation of the sustainable development commitments contained in Agenda 21,
  • committing to promote an integrated approach to planning and building sustainable cities and urban settlements,
  • committing to maintain and restore marine resources to sustainable levels with the aim of achieving these goals for depleted stocks on an urgent basis by 2015,
  • adopting the 10-Year Framework of Programmes (10YFP) on sustainable consumption and production (SCP),
  • resolving to establish an inclusive and transparent intergovernmental process on SDGs that is open to all stakeholders.
There are many other opportunities highlighted within the existing text for governments to take us forward. Nevertheless, this will not happen unless political reality on the ground changes.
The failure of the international process is not because multilateralism is wrong. The process is good. What we lack is political will. The international process can only work within existing political will. If there is no new political will to capture, the process will not do anything.
Political will is not created at international venues, it is created back at home, and on the streets. It is up to the youth and civil society movements to take it forward.
But reality can change, and we saw it in the Arab Spring. What is needed is persistence, and continued action.  Civil society campaigned for years in Egypt to achieve political change against harsh suppression, but they never gave up. Then a tipping point was reached, and everything changed in only one day.
Civil society must use all the anger that exists as a result of the Rio+20 reality check, and then alter that reality.  After all, we are running out of time.
So ECO is going home for now.  We are angry, but that will focus our energy, and we will organize. Because as Nelson Mandela so wisely said: “it always seems impossible, until it is done.” 
  By Ivy rono
communications KYG.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

A letter to Hon.Raila Amolo Odimga

Dear Raila Odinga,
When i was young (around 13 years), i attended a rally in Kilifi Public Ground which you addressed as a guest speaker. From that time on, i have been a keen follower of your political activities to date. The issues you raised then are consistent with what you have been standing for until late yesterday when you addressed the nation accepting the verdict of the supreme court, calling for unity, and pledging support for the new government. I was personally humbled by your words and moved by manner in which you presented yourself before the cameras, the nation and the world. Your political energy and vigour and endless fight for a new Kenya will stick to the memories of many Kenyans in many years to come. You have proved to us that indeed you are an enigma of the Kenyan Politics. You fought a good fight, you kept the faith and finished the race the way it ended.
As you ponder the next move, kindly allow me sir to apologize as a voter and a Kenyan. That for the last decades, we allowed ourselves to be mobilized politically along ethnic identities and the consequence of that was climaxed by the election outcome of March 4th 2013 where numbers clearly reflected tribal demography. This and among other reasons have costed your presidency not once but thrice. But where i come from we have a swahili saying: 'kuvunjika kwa mwiko sio mwisho wa kupika ugali' simply interpreted as life-no matter the misfortune-has to move on. Disappointments like road bumps should not stop us from cruising ahead. I know it is one of the many trying moments currently but be assured that God is with you. Your place in history of this country is not in vain same as your liberation struggle efforts. We enjoy all the democratic freedom and space courtesy of the spirited fight and sacrifice you and other Kenyans offered to take this country that far.
Finally it will not be kind for me to end without sharing my thoughts as many people hypothesize on the issue: what next for you. Few things can work for your legacy now:
1. In one of my communication class, i was made to appreciate the power of silence in a complex context like yours. Let Kenyans miss your voice and even public appearance for few months.
2. Think of your successor (or may be you have one in mind). Invest your political wisdom and experience to empower that possible successor- please note, not a tribal successor but someone who represent a national face.
3. I know you still have energy to engage yourself in many areas including your professional line, if i were you i could avoid any local political assignment for now. If need be then international such as AU or UN can fit your bill. Don't ask me why.
4. Whenever you will be, let your political words, actions and strategies be towards uniting this country as well as consolidating your political formation: CORD.
5. Rest, eat well, exercise and pray (more than you have been doing before) because me personally i want to see you more energetic, happier and healthy.

AS Kenyans, we will honour our patriotic duty of respecting and working with the new leadership especially when it comes to implementation and guarding of the new KATIBA which you fought for.

God bless you
Charles Dunga Chigiri
Kenyan Voter