Climate Change

Overview

Climate change has become one of the greatest challenges to human development. In Africa, dangerous weather patterns especially unpredictable droughts and floods are frighteningly posing a great challenge to national development planning and socio-economic well-being.

For some time now, and with increasing frequency and intensity in the last two decades or so, countries like Kenya have been witnessing perennial crop failures, massive loss of livestock and wildlife, unreliable power supply due to low levels of water in the country hydropower dams, out-breaks of water-borne diseases, and other problems associated with climate change.

The serious negative implications of these events for national economic growth and the well-being of the citizenry is beginning to enter the national consciousness. Universities, research institutes, civil society organizations, government agencies and the private sector are all looking for appropriate legal, policy and institutional responses to the challenge posed by climate change.

In Kenya, this concern has witnessed the establishment of climate change desks or offices in virtually all environmental lead agencies government agencies. In addition, the Government has formulated the Kenya NationalClimate Change Response Strategy in the context of the country economic development blueprint Vision 2030.

But there is still considerable ground to cover with respect to legal, policy and institutional frameworks. In virtually all African countries, climate change is yet to find coherent and comprehensive articulation in the overall national sustainable development policy frameworks.

Mainstreaming climate change into sectoral policies concerning water, energy, wildlife, forests, agriculture, infrastructure development and land use planning remains a daunting endeavour.

Many governments are ill-equipped to keep pace with the complex array of issues emerging for international climate change negotiations. Governments are yet to find ways and means to deal with the social justice aspects of climate change challenge, such as the balance needed in weighing development options for transitioning to green economies.

There is considerable knowledge and information gaps at local levels, and serious challenge on how to integrate climate change into local development planning in the face of ongoing political and economic reforms taking place.

There is also a dearth of documentation of national, regional and international policy process, lessons and best practices that would help build a body of practice for mainstreaming climate change into environmental policy for African countries.