HOW CAN KALENJIN COMPETE, COLLABORATE AND CO CREATE THE
FUTURE ON ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES?
The environment holds resources for
the future and is closely linked with the country’s economy, thus remaining to
be a hot topic in the economic discussions.
Environment cannot be separated from other
resources thus the need to make economic decisions that take in account the welfare
of the future generation. Environmental issues
are addressed at regional, national and international levels.
Major environmental issues are land
use, pollution, climate change, habitat destruction, energy conservation,
overpopulation, species conservation among other issues that face enormous
threat due to human inhabitation and encroachment to the natural ecosystems. Kalenjin
ought to contend, amalgamate and co-create on the variant fronts to protect and
conserve the future for the forthcoming generation.
LAND USE
Land use being one of the critical
environmental issues, facing an exponential threat to becoming the world’s top
environmental issue. Land is a basic factor of production and forms the basis
of other factors of production, set at the centre connecting other issues on
environment. Land use is having a
transformative upshot on the planet and is based on the functional dimension of
land for different human purposes or economic activities with the major
divisions being agricultural use, dwellings, industrial use, transport,
recreation use or nature protection area. With nearly 30% of the world’s land
surface is now in use and exponential amount of ecosystems are converted each
year.
There are variant land use practices
in Kalenjin but with same outcome of acquisition of natural assets for
immediate human needs in the expense of degrading environmental conditions,
land use impacts on environment includes alteration on atmospheric composition, the hydrological
cycle land cover and biological diversity. Collaboration is need to forestall
this greatest environmental issues by bring; land use planners, hydrologist, agronomists,
architects from Kalenjin to develop land use practices that provide both
economic and environmental welfares.
Kalenjin need also to stand the test
and co create to meet this challenge by developing regulation and policies on
land use that are grounded in law, science, economics, psychology and politics.
Having more experts trained the environmental and land use law programs thus
developing leaders with skills to put sound policies into practices at all
levels of government.
URBAN SPRAWL
World Bank predicts that by 2033 most
population would have shifted to an urban setting or a town. Thus the future
urban centers have dramatic environmental issues waiting on. urban sprawl
refers to the uncontrolled expansion of urban areas into neighbouring regions
adjoining the edge of a city to accommodate its growing population is a low
density, automobile dependent development beyond the edge of service and
employment areas, Urban sprawl measured by U-index which is a quota of the
total watershed area that is covered by either urban or agricultural lands.
There is need for Kalenjin to
prioritize the urban planning forming an outlandish monitoring an evaluating
team to caution the sprawling and village slums and learn from the South
African towns and the Kiambu’s Tatu city and following other models of other
cities in African that have exemplary town plan e.g. the Sergoit resort .
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 8TH
GOAL OF MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
(MDGS)
Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) as one of the agreement in 2000 by the United Nations
member states: Kalenjin should be the frontrunners implementers 0f Ensuring
environmental sustainability through the Integration of the principles of sustainable development
into country’s policies and programs
also dealing with reverse the loss of environmental resources. Key monitoring
of the various indicators which includes Proportion of land area covered by
forest, Ratio of area protected
to maintain biological diversity to surface area.
With reference to the 2010 (MDGs) progress report, Africa has low
forest cover, Halve proportion without
improved drinking water, halve proportion without sanitation and very high
populations living in the slums for example the
Kibera slum in Kenya, Khayelitsha in Cape Town and Amui Djor in Ghana all
exhibiting environmental impacts of informal settlements, flying toilets, poor
infrastructure and generally the conditions in the slums are surely a serious
problem thus the need for Kalenjin to relook and by fronting and implementing
this goal number eight .
ENTREPRENEURSHIP ON ENVIRONMENT
Innovative ideas between the different
counties in Kalenjin land in collaboration with other Kenyans on the business ideas, opportunities and
identification of market gaps especially those related to the environmental
issues in which the various pollutants can be put to use in an economical way, Kalenjins
can co create by pooling entrepreneurs together to come up with think-tongue
and brainstorm on variant business ideas, assembling the necessary resources to fund and nurture the brilliant
ideas that protect our mother nature .
WATER CRISIS
Water crisis is a situation where the
available water within a locality is less than the region's demand. Though in
some regions in Rift valley there is no water crisis but steps must be taken to
circumvent one in the future. The major aspects of the water crisis are
allegedly overall scarcity of usable water and water pollution, with over 80%
of the world's population living in areas with threats to water security which is
a shared threat to human and nature thus a pandemic. By 2025, this is expected to rise. The world's
population is growing and water consumption is increasing, but water resources
are decreasing. The world is running out of water." Many countries have
been declared to be in a state of water stress or water scarcity, and some
experts believe that in the future wars will be fought over water not oil.
Water crisis is manifested by
inadequate safe drinking water, insufficient access to water for sanitation and
waste disposal, Overuse and pollution of water resources harming biodiversity
Regional conflicts over scarce water resources sometimes resulting in warfare.
The core of the water crisis in Kalenjin is governance as the, saying
"There is sufficient water for everyone" and "Water
insufficiency is often due to mismanagement, corruption, lack of appropriate
institutions, bureaucratic inertia and a shortage of investment in both human
capacity and physical infrastructure these are exhibited in the Kenya,
economists claim that the water situation has occurred because of a lack of
property rights, government regulations and subsidies in the water sector, causing
prices to be too low and consumption too high.
The
Long-term solution to reduce draught or its damages is to shift from rainfall
or green water to the dam reservoir or blue water and to make necessary plans
to reserve waters in rainy periods for the less rainy years to in fact regulate
the rainy- and dry-year consumption.
Our
second major problem in water shortage rests on the consumption issue. Thus the
time Kalenjin to encourages the cultivation of the items which need less water
while on the other hand we must try to benefit from water's relative privilege
in our agricultural economy on which we depend on. With the poor being the ones
who suffer most, Water shortages can mean long walks to fetch water, high
prices to buy it, food insecurity and disease from drinking dirty water, thus are severely impacted with regard to
human health.
TOURISM
Tourism is wholly dependent on the
environment, these calls for Kalenjin to protect the environment both the
natural and man-made resources these constitute the
primary source of tourism. Any degradation of the primary sources is likely to
lead to a decline of tourism. Just like other destruction on these
resources consequently lead to the decline in the tourism revenue. Kalenjin
depend on tourism service sector and related spin-offs. The power of tourism on
the economy is enormous and as a student of economics, I appreciate the value
chain and my background as a native of a tourism country has offered me a good
opportunity to see the huge potential in tourism, like
other economic activities, tourism consumes resources. Today, tourism is one of
the major economic activities in the world.
There’s need for Kalenjin to step in
to the new front of tourism like ecotourism as a new approach in tourism in
preserving the natural area, appreciating the cultural and natural history of
environment, taking care not to disturb the integrity of the ecosystem and creating
economic opportunities.
OVERPOPULATION
As the world hits population of 7
billion, overpopulation beckons and threatens heavily the environment and
resulting into pressure on the existing natural resources to provide space for
human living and existence thus the destruction of environment both Kalenjin depend on tourism as source in revenue which
bases itself on the environment.
