A few days ago on Thursday, Hurricane Joaquin visited eastern Bahamas and left destruction in its trail. It is expected to land in the East Coast of the US anytime.
Although Kenya is thankfully spared of hurricanes, El Niño, whose damage can rival or surpass that of hurricanes, will be making a return visit soon. Despite its disruption, El Niño doesn’t usually show up uninvited. It essentially results from warmer ocean waters in the Pacific Ocean, which is accelerated by global warming that is triggered by climate change. Given its global nature, El Niño requires global solutions.
Africa should therefore not counter El Niño on a purely regional platform. Even as we take short-term measures to secure and normalise life during the El Niño period, we must join the world in taking mid and long term measures. Both El Niño and its cousin La Niña have long term disruptive effects on our ecosystems and livelihoods. Such was the case in the last El Niño back in 1997/98 and the earlier one in 1982/83.
During the recently-concluded UN General Assembly, US President Obama hit the nail on the head when he said that, ‘no country can escape the ravages of climate change... We can roll back the pollution that we put in our skies, and help economies lift people out of poverty without condemning our children to the ravages of an ever-warming climate.’
Indeed, hard working Kenyans should not be condemned to sink deeper into poverty due to the imminent ravages of El Niño. We should instead resort to the age-old martial artist trick of using your opponent’s strength to defeat him.
El Niño’s strength lies in the sheer force with which it unleashes water from the skies into our streets, farms, roads, houses, offices and everywhere else it can penetrate. There are two ways of turning this El Niño strength to our advantage.
Firstly, I suggest that we meticulously audit all the abundant resources that need to be employed towards mitigation of El Niño’s effects. Thereafter, the national and county governments should deliberately craft viable projects and act as an investor, consequently creating employment opportunities. Our youth should then be competitively recruited into these green jobs. This action shall also inspire new young entrepreneurs to share in the green money cake. Isn’t it great to show people how to fish as opposed to giving them fish?
Secondly, we shouldn’t allow all that El Niño water to go to waste but should instead harness it en masse and put it to good use. Water is life!.
These two counter-punches will however only succeed through transformative leadership at all levels of the country. Think green, act green!
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