Posted on October, 14, 2021 at 08:51 am
Climate change is behind resource-conflicts witnessed in the Laikipia County, John Letei, the County Officer in charge of climate change has said.
Speaking in Nanyuki during the launch of the Mt Kenya Forum on Climate Governance, Letei said that thanks to climate change, there is rise of competition for dwindling natural resources such as water, and pasture.
Laikipia is occupied by both farmers and pastoralists with most of the conflicts happening to the north of the county, but often extends to the west and the east.
Almost 50 per cent of the Laikipia county land mass is owned by large scale ranchers – less than 30 of them. The county borders other pastoralist counties of Baringo, Samburu and Isiolo, where farmers own large herds of cattle who often flock to Laikipia and view large ranches in in Laikipia as idle land that they could drive their livestock into, thereby causing conflicts.
In addition, John added that the county has established a climate change unit to coordinate all other departments around these issues.
The Climate Change Unit, said Letei will seek ways how to address the dwindling resources in the county which are due to frequent droughts, and intermittent rainfall which are all the impacts of climate change.
Further problem that is also arising is the issue of the emergency of invasive species which is also reducing the amount of pasture for livestock and is costing the county so much to deal with. “With the support from the county government and the donors, the county has already rehabilitated 4, 800 hectares,” he said.
To effectively tackle these, Letei said the Laikipia County is in the process of establishing a climate change fund to help residents adapt and mitigate against the effects.
Letei thanked the County government for taking the issue of climate change serious and has already developed a bill which is now awaiting ascent from the Governor.
According to Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Director of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance said the rising conflicts across the larger Mt Kenya is the reason that has led PACJA to support the creation of the Mt Kenya Forum on Climate Governance.
He noted that climate change is becoming one of the most serious challenges to Kenya’s achievement of its development goals as described under Vision 2030.
As the Vision 2030 noted, Kenya’s economy is largely dependent on rain fed agriculture, livestock, forestry, fishery and tourism, each susceptible to climate variability and change and extreme weather events. Increasing inter-seasonal variability and declining rainfall in the main rainy seasons have impacted cereal production in recent years.
He said the country is yet again in the midst of a drought – which has led to increased vulnerabilities as people in the affected areas face severe crop and livestock losses, famine and displacement which could easily escalate conflicts such as has been seen in Laikipia in the recent past.
Mithika noted that exacerbating the Kenyan situation is the fact that 80 per cent of the population relies directly on rain fed agricultural sector.
Yet there is also increasing degradation of the forests in the Mt Kenya region, which coupled with the population increase, declining land sizes and productivity have exposed Kenyans to food insecurity.
Meryne Warrah, the Coordinator of the Kenya Platform on Climate Governance noted that launch of the Mt Kenya Forum on Climate Governance will enable the sharing of ideas between civil society organizations, county government officials and other relevant stakeholders.
She said the Forum seeks to build a community of practitioners, decision makers, research institutions, researchers and the civil society organizations towards accessing Climate knowledge & building capacity (TECNOKA), Climate finance, Mitigations, Adaptation, Gender & Marginalized (GYM) and mainstreaming this to the sub-counties and ward levels in Mt. Kenya.
It also intends to support the effective engagement of County officials, in climate governance initiatives on policies and climate finance modalities of access
Source: KBC