Families feel the heat after years of deforestation in water towers

Every major town in the country is currently under a water rationing programme. From Mandera to Lamu, no town has been spared dry taps and experts are warning that things will get worse and chances are high it will take decades for them to get better.

The reason for this is that we are cutting down more trees than we can plant, some of them in key water towers.

The results of these years of deforestation have been catastrophic for Kenya which is now faced with the vagaries of climate change. As a result, the survival of populations remains at risk.

From Nairobi’s Karura Forest to the swathes of forested lands in South Nandi, forests have been incorporated into patronage networks that have continuously shrunk Kenya’s forest cover.

Historically, accelerated deforestation occurs when institutional configurations allow abuse and create opportunity for forests to become incorporated into patronage networks.

Democratisation can then exacerbate deforestation when, as in Kenya, more competitive elections produce stresses on these patronage networks and hence create incentives for state actors to accumulate forest resources for political purposes.

And when this happens, the country becomes sick. The former North Eastern Province is on its death bed. An array of issues including the wanton expansion of Dadaab Refugee Camp and the unchecked preparation of charcoal have all turned this part pf the country into a desert.

At the height of the Somalia humanitarian crisis in 2011 for instance, the population shot up to 486,913. The settlement of these people resulted in immense energy needs causing a devastating effects on the area around the camps.

Man-made desert

Thousands in the camp, wake up and start searching for fuel wood or repairing their houses and fences forcing a man-made desert to spread further from the camps.

In central Kenya, the glaciers are quickly receding. And with this, the rivers from the mountains shrinking too.

The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that only 10 of the 18 glaciers that covered the mountain’s summit a century ago remain, leaving less than one third of the previous ice cover. The Lewis Glacier, the largest on Mt Kenya, has decreased by 90 per cent in volume since 1934, with the highest rates of ice volume loss occurring around the turn of the century.

In western Kenya too, water is becoming scarce. Most permanent rivers and streams have dried up.

In Kisumu and Trans Nzoia counties, erstwhile dependable rivers such as Nzoia, Lwakhakha, Sio, Yala, Isukhu, Munang’uba, Khalaba, Musila and Lusumu are on their deathbeds.

In Gusii region, the source of River Gucha at Kiabonyoru Hills in Nyamira is drying up, spelling doom for thousands of people downstream.

Those living upstream are no better either with the wanton destruction of the country’s forest cover threatening to turn the country into a desert. Five key forests regulate 75 per cent of the country’s renewable water supplies, while more than 80 per cent of the energy generated in Kenya comes from wood.

As Kenya’s population and economy grows, the demand for wood fuel and construction materials, such as timber, is accelerating. However, Kenya is only able to meet about 70 per cent of this demand through sustainable domestic supply.

The annual deficit of 12 million cubic metres is met by formal and informal imports plus unsustainable extraction from natural forests.

This will only get worse: population growth, industrialisation and urbanisation are predicted to increase demand to 66 million cubic metres by 2030, while sustainable supply is projected to remain almost static.

This would see the annual deficit nearly treble to 34.4 million cubic metres, further endangering our forest covers.