Kenya’s Road to Sustainability: The measures in place.

As a woke nation, Kenya is now at the forefront of embracing sustainability. In its aim to fully achieve the 2030 SDGs, it is implementing some serious sustainability efforts amidst serious challenges in the various sectors to address the social, environmental, and economic aspects. Step by step, it has shown incredible improvements and showcased major success stories. With a lot of synergies from stakeholders, governments, NGOs, and CBOs, we have seen various success stories to be told.

One of the areas Kenya has shown major improvements is in the renewable energy sector. She has prioritized renewable energy development, especially in the areas of geothermal, solar, and wind energy. As a matter of fact, Kenya is leading in the production of geothermal energy in Africa and thus expanded its investments in renewable energy capacity to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. This has significantly improved the access to renewable energy in the country. However, it is a surprise that Kenya Power Company still records higher prices per unit of energy, one of the more expensive countries in Africa. Why is the math not mathing? I wonder…

The next effort Kenya has to boost sustainability measures is in her afforestation and reforestation measures. Various initiatives have been put in place to combat illegal logging, mitigate climate change, and the utmost protection of biodiversity. Notable inputs include the Green Belt Movement, which aims to plant over 15 billion trees over a period of 8 years in a bid to restore the degraded ecosystems, reach 30% forest cover, reverse deforestatio nand reduce the emission of GHGs. There are also community-based reforestation projects, i.e. youth-led activities along the riparian areas as well as vacant fields and other organizational projects in the same line.

The other interesting sector, and which we are directly involved is the recycling and waste management sector. There is so much to talk about and even more to do in this sector. However, the most important thing is that each individual is greatly responsible for their waste. Needless to say, the government has launched several infrastructures that target the growing challenges of waste pollution, especially the seepage of plastics and microplastics into the drainage systems and the waterways, thus eventually affecting and infecting marine life.

Some of the efforts put in place include the establishment of waste management infrastructure like recycling centers and collection systems. The only missing link is to empower and support upcoming companies involved in the recycling and upcycling systems. There is a need for the government to invest, or better still offset some costs like taxes, the cost of electricity and even licensing to promote more recycling and upcycling of plastic and other waste.

Chemolex is at the forefront of recycling most plastic polymers into paving blocks and plastic poles that can be used as signage along the major and minor highways in the country, a cheaper alternative to metals that are usually stolen within a week anyway. KENHA, are you there?

Water is life and without it we are toast. Thus, there is a serious need for water conservation and management. The real reason is that over the years, Kenya has been seeing an increasing rise in water scarcity. Probably due to climate change and over-harvesting by greenhouse farms, cities, and factories. This is experienced especially in arid and semi-arid areas, typically over 70 percent of all of Kenya. Kenya has implemented several strategies to conserve the scarce resource, such as rainwater harvesting, watershed protection (tsk tsk Mau people need to get out of there, by the way), as well as water resource management to improve its security and increase the resilience to climate change.

One of the other sectors that has been hit hard is food security. With the double impact of water scarcity and changing weather patterns, agriculture has proven challenging for most farmers. Thus the need for a new form of farming; sustainable agriculture to help with food security in the country. To enhance food security, Kenya is encouraging sustainable farming to promote resilience to the ever-changing climate. These steps include the adoption of conservation agriculture, climate-smart agricultural techniques, agroforestry, and the support of small-holder farmers, because as the adage goes, “kidogo kidogo hujaza kibaba,” it is these small-holder farmers that actually sustain livelihoods.

Being a Kenyan is wild. Is it because of the richness in biodiversity and iconic wildlife? Anyway, Kenya is big on wildlife protection and conservation. Poaching was totally done away with, or so I think. Is it done though? Me thinks it is still happening, but systematically. I would rather have a working system than a free-for-all market for the game, tusks, and other precious parts of wildlife. With big game like elephants, lions, and bears…oops, sorry, there are no bears. Hey, wait a minute! Did you know that in 2003, Russia (God bless her soul) donated a 4-month-old bear cub to the Ol Jogi Wildlife Conservancy in Laikipia? His name is Potap, Russian for bear – very original, lol! I wonder what happened to the little furry fellah. But the point is, Kenya’s biodiversity is the richest in Africa and harbors a wide variety of wildlife in its over 50 national parks and state trust lands. Needless to say, wildlife is key to Kenya’s tourism sector and rakes in millions of dollars annually. Precisely Kshs. 268,101,123,980.45 but who is counting? With these figures, it would only make a lot of sense to safeguard it by all means available. The sad truth is that over the last three decades, we have been losing a lot of wildlife to human activities, competing natural resource utilization, and the escalating human-wildlife conflicts. I told you so – we are wilding! Well, it is a big task to conserve this wildlife amidst the rising interest in what they can do, but still, Kenya has managed to set up good anti-poaching initiatives, including but not limited to banning ivory products. Bingo! She has also set up community-based conservation projects, conservancies, and the protection of endangered species that would otherwise go into extinction. Go figure.

Green economy is a lingo that is used but many don’t really get it or rather, can’t relate. But in layman’s language, this an economy that seeks to reduce its carbon footprint, and embrace efficient and socially inclusive methods of doing things while also trying to make some money. Obviously, this is a gargantuan task and requires some tactical optimization. Did I also mention that the system must be sustainable to be termed green? There you go. Our Kenya has done this by promoting sustainable consumption and production practices i.e. energy production and consumption. We are also now starting to discuss and put in place measures that only tackle or deal with eco-friendly ways of doing things. Talk of eco-friendly technologies, sustainable economic planning and policy-making, eco-tourism, green industries, and sustainable urban development policies that are geared towards environmental conservation.

There is much to discuss and still more actions are being taken to set Kenya in the center stage for sustainability in the long run. We are not yet there but we sure as hell are headed in the right direction. These sustainability measures reflect our sheer commitment to the achievement of the SDGs for the present and future generations. Although there are still challenges in the funding and implementation of these strategies, there is a need for collaboration between the inter-agencies to create a powerful synergy that will see us achieve these goals, one at a time until we have it all behind us. Come on, 2030 is here with us!

Let there be sustainability.

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