It’s time to take forward Maathai’s conservation bid

April is well under way and the long rains are lingering. The drought in Turkana and other northern counties put many families and pastoralists at risk. It sent shock waves across the nation. Although the government and other stakeholders are delivering essential food and water aid to mitigate effects of famine, we all know that long-term solutions are going to be hard to implement.

Kenya is growing arid by the year, as is the whole of the Horn of Africa, as are entire regions in our continent, with formerly water rich Cape Town gone completely dry. Similar trends can be seen elsewhere, from Australia’s water scarcity, through extreme weather conditions in the US, to melting glaciers in Greenland and Pakistan.