Kenya

Maasai pastoralists in the Ottepesi region Rift Valley of Kenya are training as videographers to document the impacts of climate change on their communities.

See the video at: http://www.conversationsearth.org/

I am a Kenyan university student and have had to watch helplessly as the Tana delta is invaded by unsustainable practices and foreign investments in the Ramsar protected area. Now we have to contend with reduced biodiversity and water.

This is a good topic for Kenya where local communities have to carry the burden of environmental degradation caused by companies aimed at profit making without looking at the sustainability of the community. However, I have some worries.

How people perceive and respond to the management of environment is critical for ecosystem protection and sustainable development especially where people’s livelihood is dependent heavily on ecological services. The constantly evolving dynamics of public perception necessitate development of durable information by creating, disseminating and evaluating public knowledge periodically if public perception is to be used to direct relevant policy alternatives formulation.

Kindly see attached document, Indigenous Communities in Face of Climate Change: The Case of Tana Delta, Kenya, which I wish to share with the Frontlines Forum concerning the impacts of climate change on the indigenous community, a case of Tana delta in Kenya.

I work with ethnic minority groups like Tana Delta Coast Province Kenya namely, Watta, Sanya, Malakote, Boni, Bajuni and Wakone respectively in a programme titled protecting the rights of minority groups,conserving the wetlands of Tana Delta with the Kenya Wetlands Forum with its secretariat housed in East Africa wildlife Society.

The situation is really now quite alarming for the pastoralist community, especially where I come from, explains Jane Naini Meriwas, a Yaaku from Kenya (Africa). Traditionally, we say that in this season it is rain, in this other season it is dry. So the community makes plans. As my community is nomadic, we move with the livestock. If it will be a very long dry spell, then we use a traditional set-up where we select places where animals can graze, and other places that we will protect. And then other times, we will move. So when it is dry, people migrate.

Having been victims of drought and famines for the last two decades turkana district once a savannah is a no go zone. The district is 77,000sq kms, vast and arid.hosting one of the hottest spots on earth known as suguta valley with temperatures ranging from 50C to 65C. The contributing factors to these climatic changes is as a result of: -