Walk the talk on viable solutions to new 'normal'

President William Ruto in Paris during a round-table on climate funding with President Emmanuel Macron. [PCS]

Guys, I bring you greetings from my cocoon of blankets, from where I have been working since July decided I shall be frozen the moment I step out and act normal.

Let me tell you about my normal. It is the one that makes you look a joker when you stop at a gas station and say “One K!” with confidence, only for the dashboard to retort: “Hata ungeacha tu!”

The normal that had Sh1,000 fuel lasting four to five days if you used a minor machine to and from work over 12km a day, is gone.

Everything is expensive. Everyone is complaining. But even this is normal because life goes on.

There is another new normal. The one President William Ruto referred to during the Global Citizen Festival in Paris, France. The President went like “Guys!” then delved into the climate issues, exhibiting the grasp of an expert or someone at the frontline of the crisis.

He focused on the crisis as being “the new normal” globally, Kenya’s efforts to increase resilience, the 92 per cent renewable energy in the national grid, the power in “our hands”, need for fairness and a reliable financial system that neither favours the global South nor the North. A great speech. As a matter of fact, this new normal has appeared in Mexico, India, Texas, China and several other parts of the developed world through heat waves, causing emergency cases and hundreds of fatalities.

Meanwhile, Monday July 3 was declared the Planet Earth’s hottest day ever recorded (since the end of the 19th Century), with an average temperature of 17°C.

Scientists attributed the high temperatures to a combination of El Nino weather and CO2 emissions. It is obvious that just as the climate crisis presents itself through many calamities, from floods, to heat waves, cyclones or drought, solution is multifaceted.

For cause, the fossil fuel industry may be largely to blame, but deforestation has its fair share too.

According to the US Agency for International Development data released in February, deforestation contributes between 12 per cent and 20 per cent of global GHG emissions.

Other changes disrupting forest structures also have their own share in global warming. Barely a fortnight since the Paris speech, Ruto lifted a six-year ban on logging. This was a different Ruto!

But what were the survival tactics for the population the President targeted with this populist announcement?

Granted, the Panda Miti project targeting planting (and hopefully growth) of 15 billion trees within 10 years, together with other individual and corporate efforts, may cater for the trees that may be lost with the lifting of the ban. But it takes only a minute to fell a tree that took decades to grow and the rate of carbon sequestration risks falling.

Even if government has measures to control logging, cartels who feed the endemic corruption beasts in Kenya, will not sleep. Probably government could have just financially boosted the people’s alternative income!

Tackling the climate crisis is key for economic prosperity, considering its effect on rain-fed agriculture, a backbone of many African economies. This of course affects food security, and by extension health, education, poverty eradication and more.

Poverty may be the new normal for many, but “guys!” the solutions to the problems must be sustainable.

President Ruto himself said this in Paris: “It is possible for all of us to act differently to course correct. What has gone wrong, we have it in our power to get it right.” Yes, we can get it right Mr President!

The writer is communications manager at GreenFaith. @lynno16 | [email protected]