Our Planet with Anthony Mugo

  Consulting as an occupation remains poorly understood in Kenya beyond a few traditional professions such as medicine, law, accounting and human resources. For other professions, tertiary training programmes generally do not emphasise the possibility of their graduates starting their own practice in their areas of specialisation. This is even though some professions can offer vital capacities that are universally required and for which companies and individuals are willing to pay a premium to build. This situation makes it doubly difficult for those trained in some professions to package themselves as consultants. This is principally because there are very few or even non-existent tailored training programmes specifically for consulting, particularly in many non-traditional fields. For those who decide to navigate the murky waters and gain the requisite consulting skills through trial and error, the journey towards success can prove to be particularly arduous. Many get discour...

An emerging school of thought about implications of climate change  sheds light on a dimension of the phenomenon that is rarely given due attention - opportunities brought about by climate change. Proponents of this perspective, such as Dr Richard Munang, who heads the UN Environment’s Ecosystem Based Adaptation for Food Security (EBAFOSA), are convinced that opportunities resulting from climate change can hold the answers to the continent’s perennial problems including youth unemployment and food insecurity. They feel that implementing actions to counter the negative impacts of climate change without linking them directly to outcomes that confer tangible day to day benefits to communities makes such actions unsustainable.    On the other hand, combining climate actions with economically empowering innovations that counter the negative impacts of climate change guarantees the sustainability of those actions and the improvement of the livelihoods of communities. Th...

More than 45 bloggers recently gathered in Naivasha for an exciting training workshop on blogging around issues of the environment with special emphasis on climate change. The workshop, which ran between 25 th and 28 th April 2019, was the second of its kind, the first having been convened in Kisumu last year. It was hosted by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry as an initiative of its Green Growth and Employment Project and the Directorate of Environmental Education and Awareness in partnership with the Climate Change Directorate. Most of the participating bloggers were members of the Bloggers Association of Kenya (BAKE), whose popularity has risen rapidly over the past three years. BAKE is a community association of Kenya bloggers and content creators which promotes online content creation and free expression in Kenya. It was formed in 2011 after a series of discussions concerning access to information and consumption of online content in the country. It has become a...

Kenya has remained at the forefront in making policies to strengthen its ability to adapt to the adverse effects of climate, take advantage that might result from the phenomenon and to meet ambitious mitigation targets. It will be recalled that mitigation to climate change involves taking measures to reduce the volume of greenhouse gases (GHGs) getting into the atmosphere or reducing GHGs already present there. During the most recent global negotiations held during the 24 th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) - popularly known as CoP 24 held in Katowice, Poland between 2 nd and 14 th December 2018, Kenya reiterated its mitigation target of reducing by 30 per cent GHGs' emission by 2030. Mitigation is usually a complicated undertaking, particularly for developing countries. The reality is that countries with advanced economies achieved their development through the exploitation of natural resources from within and outsi...

There are sustained efforts by various public and non-governmental agencies to promote conservation agriculture (CA) as an effective strategy for environmental conservation generally and climate change adaptation specifically. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) regards conservation agriculture as a crop production method that strives to achieve profits, sustained production levels while concurrently conserving the environment. The technique involves minimal disturbance of the soil while planting and weeding farms. There are three rules that need to be followed for a practice to be regarded as CA. These are: do not turn the soil, keep the soil covered, and rotate crops. It combines several basic principles namely: reduction in tillage; retention of adequate levels of crop residues and soil surface cover; and use of crop rotation. Immediate climate change related benefits from the practice include reduced emission of carbon dioxide stored...

Many Kenyans now say that the country’s climate has changed in a dramatic way. The current ongoing rains, which have resulted in the loss of unprecedented numbers of human lives and those of livestock, displacement and catastrophic damage to infrastructure are an ominous reminder that climate change is real. Tragically, the rains followed a protracted drought, which also took its share of loss of life and property. The reality of climate change has hit home. It has however taken a long time for the phenomenon to be recognised for what it is. A major issue about which if nothing is done has the potential to reverse gains made in all fronts of the development process: economic, social, environmental and political. At the national level, Kenya’s policy and legislative response to climate change has been pioneering. Climate change is no longer regarded as just a cross-cutting issue. Going by national policy and legal actions that have been taken in a very short space of time, the n...