Our Planet with Anthony Mugo

  As the global community marked the World Hypertension Day on 17 th May 2025, the national spotlight has turned to the unfolding public health crisis of rising incidence of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in Kenya, particularly hypertension. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) NCDs, which are also referred to as chronic diseases, are ailments not transmitted directly from one person to another. Whereas they are still not the leading cause of disease and death in Kenya, these conditions are contributing significantly to the increasing economic and human resource loss burden and, therefore, undermining the country’s social and economic development. Responsible for 39 per cent of deaths in Kenya, NCDs have become one of the biggest public health concerns. According to the MoH, 30 percent of Kenyans have hypertension and majority are not aware, hence why it is referred to as the silent killer. If not well controlled, hypertension leads to the most common life-threaten...

  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...

Kenya has been hailed as being at the forefront in the formulation of laws and policies on climate change. The 2010 National Climate Change Response Strategy (NCCRS) was a first in the region. By the time of its launch, other regional countries had not yet begun formulating their national climate change response plans. The launch of the NCCRS was followed by the first National Climate Change Action Plan (2013 – 2017), a comprehensive blueprint to guide Kenya in following a low carbon, climate resilient development pathway on its journey to becoming a middle-income country with a high standard of life in line with Vision 2030. A Report of a new study commissioned by a leading Kenyan NGO involved in diverse development initiatives, including environment and natural resources management, known as Act. Change. Transform! (Act!), reveals that counties in northern Kenya are yet to mainstream climate change in their laws and policies despite the area being the most vulnerable to its ne...

Fatuma Hussein uses her foot to roll a 20-litre container of water along the newly built road that connects Merile Bridge in Isiolo County with Marsabit town in Marsabit County. It is yet another hot morning and Fatuma is anxious to get the first 20 litres of water to her home and help her mother to prepare a meal for the family. Her younger brother Ali Hussein resumed school this week. Their father decided to employ one of their older cousins to be taking their livestock, 100 goats and 15 camels, to pasture, to give Ali the chance to go to school. Fatuma will however not resume school until the long dry spell is over at which time water will be available closer to their home where her mother can easily fetch it and still do other routine chores. This scenario is replayed among many pastoralist families in northern Kenya. It is common to find parents opting to keep girls out of school or even having them drop out altogether while their brothers continue with their education. ...

Climate-smart agriculture has been described as the approach that addresses all the three elements of sustainable development namely: economic, social and environmental. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) views climate-smart agriculture as an approach that sustainably increases productivity, enhances resilience to climate change by reducing or removing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and enhances the achievement of national food security and development goals. The term “climate-smart agriculture” (CSA) was adopted in late 2010 at the 1st Global Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change at The Hague. It describes tensions between maximizing global agricultural productivity, increasing the resilience of agricultural systems in the face of climate change, and concerns to GHG emissions from agriculture. Projections show that while the global population will rise to 9.6 billion by 2050. Over the same period, there will be a re...

In Kenya, climate change is predicted to result in increased frequency of extreme events, particularly droughts and floods. It has been noted that droughts in the East and Horn of Africa region used to occur after every 10 years between the 1960s and the 1970s. This frequency has increased to the extent that drought started occurring after every five years during the 1990s and could become even more frequent in the future due to climate change. In addition, droughts and floods have become more severe and rainfall less predictable due to the phenomenon. More than 80 per cent of Kenya’s land mass is categorised as arid and semi-arid. All counties in the North of Kenya are in this category. The only sustainable livelihood activity that has been possible there is pastoralism. Communities that live in this region are therefore very dependent on natural climate-sensitive resources namely water, pasture and livestock. Conflict: a consequence resource scarcity As competition for ...

One of the key pillars of Kenya’s President, H E Uhuru Kenyatta’ "Big Four" strategy aimed at securing his legacy is food security, the others being universal health, access to housing and manufacturing. Despite Kenya being an agricultural country, food shortages have been experienced on regular basis with some communities facing malnutrition and even famine that is in some areas severe enough to cause loss of human lives. This situation has often required emergency measures of an international scale. It is estimated that 98 per cent of agricultural production in Kenya is rain fed. Therefore the leading cause of food insecurity is shortage of water due to drought. According to the National Climate Change Action Plan (2013 – 2017), droughts are expected to become more frequent with increasing global warming. Before the adverse effects of climate change started to be felt in the country, drought used to occur in cycles of 5 – 10 years. With climate change however, this ...

In recent years, there has been much talk about increasing the use of “clean” energy and even more preferably “green,” clean energy. Demand for use of clean and green energy has been spurred by the raised global consciousness about the dangers posed by use of non-renewable fossil fuels: petroleum, natural gas and coal to power industries, transportation and homes. Except for the so called climate change deniers, majority of the world’s population is in agreement that something needs to be done urgently in order to reduce emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and to forestall global warming that has resulted in the climate change being observed today. For many people however, the quest for countries to increase the proportion of energy in use from a mix dominated by fossil fuels to one with more clean and green energy raises the question, what is green energy and what is clean energy? Many people use the phrases “clean energy” and “green energy” interchangeably. Respected inte...

Beginning in 1958 an American scientist known as Charles David Keeling devoted his life to meticulously and regularly track precise levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere until his death in 2005. He monitored carbon dioxide that is present in the atmosphere (atmospheric carbon dioxide) from a laboratory located on an isolated island volcanic mountain in Hawaii known as Mauna Loa. The exact place where Keeling undertook this work was the Mauna Loa Observatory set up by the  U.S. Weather Bureau (now a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA).  In the course of this period, the Mauna Loa Observatory has generated data that scientists have been using to draw firm conclusions to the effect that carbon dioxide emission levels over the last four decades have been increased by human activities generally and the burning of fossil fuels specifically. This accumulated carbon dioxide together with other greenhouse gases is responsible for global warmi...

By the time the global community agreed almost unanimously to sign the Paris Agreement on climate change in December 2015 in Paris, France, there was no doubt that the goal of preventing the rise of average global temperature by above two degrees centigrade from pre-industrial levels was not going to be achieved. It, therefore, required that all countries take drastic measures towards climate change mitigation. This meant setting reduction targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that they intended to meet, which are referred to as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. The two degree centigrade target (equivalent to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) was set during the Conference of the Parties to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Cancun Mexico in 2010. It was in the spirit of the UNFCCC, which is also known as the Climate Convention agreed upon during the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. The UNFCCC’s broad aim is to stabilise GHG concentrations in the atmosp...