Vihiga Governor Dr. Wilber Ottichilo during an interview with the Standard at Sosa cottages in Vihiga on August 20, 2021. [Benjamin Sakwa, Standard]
For starters, what is climate change and why is it a big deal?
Climate is systems brought together to determine how life has evolved on this planet though the hydrological cycle. Through history in the evolution of planet earth, temperature and rainfall patterns stabilised making life possible. Climate started being predictable and constant only changing with small variations when we had seasons like rainy, sunny and more.
But this changed when human activities became more and more through agrarian age, the iron and ore periods where mining was done to industrial revolution in the 17th and 18th centuries. The mining led to discovery of oil and that was the genesis of climate change. And with climate change came the greenhouse effect. Human activities like industrialism, have caused harmful gases in the earth’s atmosphere.
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The gases have acted as a coat like the glass in a greenhouse, trapping the sun’s heat and stopping it from leaking back into space and causing global warming.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) among other greenhouse gases occurs naturally, but human activity is increasing the concentrations of some of them in the atmosphere. This layer that coats the atmosphere caused what is now called global warming.
The problem has been worsened by human beings cutting forests and trees which act as carbon sinks.
Climate change has transformed the way people live, causing floods in places like the lake region and droughts in North Eastern hence water shortages making it harder to produce food. Some regions could become dangerously hot and others uninhabitable because of rising sea levels.
Scientists have set a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees centigrade as the “safe” limit for global warming. If temperatures go higher, damaging changes to the natural environment will probably transform humans’ way of life.
Interestingly, the CoG conference that was postponed, settled on climate change as its theme. This is quite commendable given that the country is in a hot political season ahead of 2022 elections. What informed this decision?
As governors, we had a discussion on what theme we should adopt in this 7th and last annual devolution conference and climate emerged as the hottest debate that deserves attention. Climate is what makes us survive as mankind and any threat to it means a threat to our very existence.
It was a unanimous decision by all council members that we focus our efforts on climate change and investment.
Extreme weather events - such as floods in the lake region, the ongoing droughts in 12 North Eastern counties and heatwaves in Europe are more frequent and intense, threatening lives and livelihoods.
There was a big need to intervene by starting a discussion and the conference to do a proper audit and make practical recommendations to fill in the gaps that have frustrated the full implementation of the multi-level government system in climate change.
On the national front, how is Kenya doing with its climate commitments in regard to the Paris Agreement?
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, it was set out how nations Kenya included would decrease carbon emissions.
2020 was the year countries were expected to present improved climate plans to UN Climate Change as part of a ratchet mechanism to meet the accord’s goals. Yes, we have done a lot by giving ourselves the 10 per cent tree cover target in terms of afforestation.
In Vihiga County, we are doing the restoration of Maragoli Hills forest and Kibiri Forest among others.
We want to do more than just planting trees as part of climate change. Kenya has to do more by coming up with other regulations that can breathe life to Paris Agreement.
Kenya enacted the Climate Change Bill in 2006, but there is little progress. What seems to be the issue? Is there political goodwill?
Global warming that is the main issue of climate change needs a global approach.
We need more donors to help us restore our forests and help curb greenhouse gas emission. We absolutely need to reduce or eliminate emissions, and fast. But while many of the problems inhibiting effective climate action revolve around political leadership we ought to delink politics and climate change if we want to save the Planet Earth.
Agriculture has been shown to contribute to more than 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. What climate smart solutions can farmers embrace to mitigate that and adapt to climate change?
Farmers need to adopt agroforestry and conservation agriculture as a new form of agricultural production. Agricultural organic materials and wastes should be composited using new biotechnologies for production of organic fertiliser instead of burning the same.
Livestock production contributes to production of greenhouse gases mainly methane. To mitigate this, cow dung, which is the main source, should be used in the production of biogas and organic fertiliser thus limiting emission of greenhouse gases. This will further reduce the use of firewood as a source of energy in rural areas.
Farmers can drastically reduce agricultural post-harvest losses by adopting new agricultural storage and conservation methods.
Overall, farmers need to systematically adopt precision agriculture where losses and wastes are drastically minimised and consequently emission of greenhouse gases.
Though climate change is real and the current big threat affecting agriculture, farmers like my grandmother are suffering and have no clue what is happening. What are counties doing to create awareness at the grassroots level?
It’s true that by failing to address climate change, many systems are collapsing including the agriculture sector. As governors, we realise that climate change is impacting more negatively at the community level, so we have agenda to help our grandmothers know what is going on. We are calling on them to know how to live with climate change as we try to stop the temperature from increasing. As CoG we believe that climate change should be given the most priority in all we do.
Climate change financing is a big global issue. Ahead of CoP 26 in November, what message would you like to send to Boris Johnson, the US and other developed nations that are the biggest polluters and contributors to greenhouse gas emissions?
What I know later in November this year, the UK will be hosting 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (CoP26) and Kenya probably will send a strong delegation to the summit to share experience and success on climate change.
But the message to the conference should be that highly industrialised countries like the US should be at the forefront of this issue of climate change. Because they are the biggest polluters and contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, they ought to be pushing for higher funding through the World bank to help countries like Kenya and others in Africa.
