PACJA, partners launch Mt Kenya Forum on Climate Governance to restore degraded region’s environment
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Speaking during the launch of the Forum, Mithika Mwenda, the Executive Director of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance said the Mt Kenya Forum on Climate Governance is informed by the apparent rise in climate change impacts and its threats to millions of the vulnerable Kenyans.
He noted that climate change is becoming one of the most serious challenges to Kenya’s achievement of its development goals as described under Vision 2030.
As the Vision 2030 noted, Kenya’s economy is largely dependent on rain fed agriculture, livestock, forestry, fishery and tourism, each susceptible to climate variability and change and extreme weather events. Increasing inter-seasonal variability and declining rainfall in the main rainy seasons have impacted cereal production in recent years.
He said the country is yet again in the midst of a drought – which has led to increased vulnerabilities as people in the affected areas face severe crop and livestock losses, famine and displacement.
Mithika noted that exacerbating the Kenyan situation is the fact that 80 per cent of the population relies directly on rain fed agricultural sector.
The ministry of Agriculture estimates that nine in ten Kenya’s agricultural sector in the country is rain-fed, and is highly sensitive to changes in temperature and rainfall, despite only 20% of the country’s lands being considered arable.
Yet there is also increasing degradation of the forests in the Mt Kenya region, which coupled with the population increase, declining land sizes and productivity have exposed Kenyans to food insecurity.
Meryne Warrah, the Coordinator of the Kenya Platform on Climate Governance noted that launch of the Mt Kenya Forum on Climate Governance will enable the sharing of ideas between civil society organizations, county government officials and other relevant stakeholders.
She said the Forum seeks to build a community of practitioners, decision makers, research institutions, researchers and the civil society organizations towards accessing Climate knowledge & building capacity (TECNOKA), Climate finance, Mitigations, Adaptation, Gender & Marginalized (GYM) and mainstreaming this to the sub-counties and ward levels in Mt. Kenya.
It also intends to support the effective engagement of County officials, in climate governance initiatives on policies and climate finance modalities of access.