NAKURU, Kenya (PAMACC News) – Many Counties in North Eastern Kenya, Eastern and Coastal region are currently staring at starvation right in the face, as residents drop dead due to famine caused by the ongoing dry spell.

The country is already going through power rationing due to the reduced amount of water used for geothermal power generation, as the sun burns with vengeance across the entire country.
It is for such reasons that Egerton University, one of the major training institutions in Africa has convened am international conference, and climate change and variations are to be among the main topics to be discussed.

The conference that will run from 29th-31st March 2017 at the university’s main campus in Njoro-Nakuru County will also discuss natural resources as well as health and environment under a main theme “Knowledge and Innovation for Social and Economic Development.”

The chair of the conference committee who is also the university’s Deputy Director in charge of Research and Extension says the above subthemes have been inspired by the need to address climate change as “a developmental threat that will affect agriculture and the economy.”

While looking forward to presentations on climate change adaptation and mitigation during the conference, among others, Bockline Bebe, a Professor of Livestock Production says as that Kenya should lead the way in providing solutions to climate change, given that it hosts the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

This is not the first time that the University, known for agriculture, is including the above subthemes that directly touch on climate change in the conference. However, Dr. Gilbert Obwoyere the Dean Faculty of Environment and Natural Resource Development (FERD), enough attention has not been given to the phenomenon that has caused havoc in many parts of the world.

Dr Obwoyere says, however, there is need to also focus on the positive attributes of climate change apart from just looking at it from a negative perspective.

“For instance areas that had too much rainfall will receive little (or perhaps, manageable) rainfall,” he points out while citing out “food security, infrastructure and growing economies” and their relation to climate change as three of the most urgent areas that need to be researched on.

Like Dr. Obwoyere, Peter Macharia a Nakuru based Consultant on environmental issues agrees that there exists a gap on climate change research.

For him there is need to research on the relationship between economics and demographics on matters that influence climate change, among other issues.
“What pushes people to subdivide land for example when it has a direct impact on climate change,” he points out.

There has been an intensified debate at the international level on matters of climate change in the recent past. While Kenya has always been part of this debate it has gone ahead to even pass a specific law on climate change.

The law, Climate Change Act (2016) “provides for a regulatoryframework for enhanced response to climatechange; to provide for mechanism and measures toachieve low carbon climate development.” It aims at integrating climate change response mechanisms at both the national and county government level.

Macharia says for climate change policy to succeed there is need to have a bottom-up approach in both the formulation and the implementation of the same.

The deadline for the submission of abstracts for the Egerton University conference is 20th January, 2017.