By Abdullahi Jamaa
Last month the government of Kenya banned the use of plastic bags in a bid to address relentless environmental degradation across the country. In our county of Wajir, this action was long overdue, but the time could never be better.
When it comes to matters environment, Wajir seemingly bears the brunt of devastation resulting from a combination of human and natural activities. The biota of our pristine land has degenerated over the years completely affecting the way we live.
And yes we are dealing with annual emergency situations where repeated drought condition is a common occurrence. We have already paid the price of not taking any step in dealing with this menace; unfortunately, we continue to master negligence and irresponsibility when it comes to our surroundings.
Death and destruction as a result of cyclic dry spells have been so common particularly in the hinterland-the bedrock of our livelihood. Our patched and bare county is slowly transforming into a deathbed of its own residence and this is so because we don’t appreciate the role of environment in our lives and livelihoods.
There are serious concerns regarding the performance of our fledgling economy that depends on pastoralism, decreased livestock productivity resulting from a shortage of pasture and water subsequently weakened our herds, production of milk and meat has been declining for the past two decades and food shortage is a common occurrence.
Herders are falling back into a sedentary lifestyle and remaining ones have to contend with a devastated environment where animal husbandry is increasingly getting difficult to practice. Both human and animals’ adaptive responses to chronic ecological degradation is weakening every passing day.
Toxicity level of our environment is increasingly alarming; an emergence new strain of human and animal diseases is a powerful indication of how bad things are growing. In recent years, we have witnessed an outbreak of skin diseases affecting mostly young children across our county; our herders have encountered strange and mysterious diseases that instantly kill our livestock.
The cause of our problem is directly or indirectly related to prevailing environmental degradation that has seen little or no action from both the people and the two levels of government. Over the last few decades we have cut millions of trees than we have planted, in the same breath we have killed more giraffes and gazelles than we have protected, we have eroded more of our topsoil than we have conserved. From our inactivity, the alpha diversity of our surrounding is facing extinction at a nearly irreversible scale.
I closely reviewed the speech of Wajir Governor Hon. Mohamed Abdi Mohamud during the first session of the second assembly, like his predecessor his concern on our environment is unsatisfactory low if his own speech is anything to go by. In one instance he said “It is not that we do not have better options to increase productivity and address food insecurity, but it is because beneficial and right approaches have not been put into place” Sadly though, he did not say anything on environmental conservation. The billion dollar question is: How then will we as the people of Wajir address food insecurity without the inclusion of the role of environment?
We are handling pastoralism casually, we are managing our environment carelessly and our future predictably hangs in the balance. Our homesteads are living examples of our environmental unconsciousness, we are too lazy to plant one or two trees because we lay the blame on lack of water, the fact of the matter is in Wajir we waste a lot more water than we need to plant a tree.
The prognosis is either not good. No action means no environment and hence no livestock. Nobody but ourselves will save us from the looming destruction of poverty that is getting red in tooth and claw. Time is up and we have to rescue ourselves from the current situation. Isn’t it the time, therefore, to be conscious about our environment?
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Abdullahi Jamaa is a freelance journalist and a communication consultant. You can contact him at jamaa.abdullahi@gmail.com
