NAIROBI, Kenya (PAMACC News) – It is a rainy season in Kenya, and the environment in many parts of the country including dryland areas is generally green. But two months ago in Kyenire village, Mbeere Sub-county of Embu in Eastern Kenya, it was Venanzio Njiru’s two acre farm that stood out as the only green spot surrounded by environment with dry grass and shrubs with brown leaves running into the horizon. However, rainfall is for a short season in this part of the country because after it subsides towards the end of May as predicted by the Kenya Meteorological Department, residents may soon be subjected to another dry spell that may last between one and three years without the precious drops. “This is how it has always been, hence a reason why I had adopt a smart way of surviving,” said Njiru, who has now invested in Climate Smart Agriculture through permaculture.Using water piped from Thosi River some 10 kilometres away, the former street hawker in Mombasa has a mosaic of different types of crops that include cover crops, leguminous plants, fruit trees, among others intercropped with maize planted in zai-pits and even sugarcane. He also keeps cattle, indigenous chicken, goats, and despite of it being a dryland area, he keeps fish in his water storage ponds.“Using very simple techniques, Njiru is one of the very few residents in this area who have sufficient food to feed their families, and have more for the market despite the tough climatic conditions,” said Wanjiku Wanjohi of Ishiara Parish, a Catholic church in Embu County.The Parish is one of the faith based organisations on the ground, which have been interacting with residents especially smallholder farmers to identify best practices that could help in formulating a county climate change policy document that is responsive to the prevailing conditions.The first ever climate change policy drafting initiative at the county level in Kenya is driven by the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) in collaboration with Trocaire, and with support from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) where faith based organisations have been collaborating with community based groups and individuals to identify best practices at the grass roots level.“Clearly, Njiru together with a few others have demonstrated that with access to water for irrigation, residents can easily adapt to climate change, an idea that we thought was an important factor to be included in the county climate change policy,” said Wanjohi. Development of such policies dominated the annual summit on Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) in Nairobi, where experts said that that was the only way of scaling up CSA, by moving from pilots to the implementation. “We already have enough ideas and innovations. What we lack in many African countries is the implementation framework,” said Dr Richard Mungang, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Africa Regional Climate Change Programme Coordinator.“We need policies to govern Climate Smart Agriculture, because without policies, there cannot be development,” he said.His sentiments were echoed by Richard Kamau the Executive Director…

 BONN, Germany, (PAMACC News) - If Paris was historic in carving a global climate deal, Katowice will define the political urgency for climate action. Negotiations at the just ended United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, focused on the Paris Agreement Work Programme, under which countries are designing the guidelines that will move the climate pact from concepts to actions. The Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group, at the concluding session, expressed concern at the lack of urgency in moving the negotiations forward. “It is time to look at the bigger picture, see the severe impacts that climate change is having across the world, and rise to the challenge,” said Group Chair, Gebru Jember Endalew. He expects steady progress be made throughout 2018 on all issues so that poor and vulnerable countries can engage effectively.“A last-minute rush at COP24 risks leaving developing countries behind,” he said.The Paris RulebookThe Rulebook spells guidelines on how to put the Paris Agreement into practice.There is a call for a fair, robust and transparent Rulebook that inspires confidence among countries to step up and commit to enhanced national climate targets by 2020.They are essential for determining whether total world emissions are declining fast enough to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. These include boosting adaptation and limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2°C, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.“I am satisfied that some progress was made here in Bonn. But many voices are underlining the urgency of advancing more rapidly on finalizing the operational guidelines. The package being negotiated is highly technical and complex. We need to put it in place so that the world can monitor progress on climate action,” said Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change.Progress on AgricultureRecognizing the urgency of addressing interests in the agriculture sector, the Bonn conference made a significant advance on the “Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture” by adopting a road-map for the next two-and-a-half years.Farmers are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts such as prolonged droughts and shifting rainfall patterns, and agriculture is an important source of emissions. This road-map responds to the world’s farming community of more than 1 billion people and to the 800 million people who live in food-insecure circumstances, mainly in developing countries. It addresses a range of issues including the socio-economic and food-security dimensions of climate change, assessments of adaptation in agriculture, co-benefits and resilience, and livestock management.But not with Finance…Without advances in the talks over the commitment of future financial support from rich countries to developing nations, who are already facing devastating climate impacts, it became difficult for other areas of the negotiations to progress.LDC Group Chair, Gebru Jember Endalew, stated “Finance is key to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. In the face of climate change, poor and vulnerable countries are forced to address loss and damage and adapt to a changing climate, all while striving to lift their people out of poverty without repeating the mistakes of an economy built on…

ISINYA, Kenya (PAMACC News) - After losing nearly all of his cattle to drought in 2017, David Ole Maapia, a young Maasai man who grew up in Kenya’s Kajiado County as a herdsboy is one of many residents from pastoralist communities who are slowly changing their way of living, to adapt to the changing climatic conditions in the country.“It is already raining, and there will be plenty of pastures in the coming months. But following my experience last year, and also what happened to my neighbours, I can no longer keep cattle for more than a day,” said Ole Maapia, a resident of Isinya Township, 56 kilometres out of Nairobi City. “Instead, I have chosen to bank all my wealth in sheep and goats,” he said.The 32 year old father of five children lost 48 cattle following last year’s dry spell. And for the past six months, he has been buying cattle almost every day, have them slaughtered the same day before supplying meat to designated hotels in Nairobi. He then uses the profit to purchase at least two or three goats every market day.I already have more than 200 goats and sheep, and I know by December, I will have over 1000,” he said. “If I sell all of them during the festive Christmas period, I will have enough money to purchase a small piece of land within Isinya Township where I intend to construct commercial houses as an alternative source of livelihood,” he said.Many other residents have as well abandoned cattle keeping, which has for many years been considered the most prestigious thing among pastoralist communities.Though without any formal education, Ole Maapia’s switch in lifestyle conforms with key findings from a new scientific study in Kenya, which shows that cattle have been the most vulnerable animals to climate change in nearly all the 21 semi arid counties in the country.According to the study conducted by scientists from the Kenya Markets Trust (KMT) with support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Canada and the UK Department for International Development (DFID), through a project known as Pathways to Resilience in Semi-arid Economies (PRISE), average cattle population in all semi arid counties reduced by 26 percent between the year 1977 and 2016.But the same study, whose key findings are currently being disseminated to targeted counties reveals that the population in sheep and goats increased by an impressive 76 percent in the same period, with camel population also increasing by 13 percent. “This is a clear impact of climate change,” Dr Mohammed Said, one of the lead researchers told Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We say it is climate change because in the past 50 years, we observed increase in temperatures in all the counties with five of them recording more than 1.5°C increase in the same period,” he said.The most affected county, says the scientist, is Turkana, whose temperature increased by 1.8°C in the past 50 years, leading to over 60 percent decrease in cattle population in the past 38 years.According to…

BONN, Germany (PAMACC News) - As the Bonn climate talks came to close on May 10, civil society and non-party stakeholder groups reiterated their call for urgent climate action. The groups demand that governments follow-up the Paris Agreement with increased urgent action to prevent average global warming from rising 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. At an action event at the Bonn climate change talks in advance of the closing session of the Talanoa Dialogue, groups highlighted that Parties must reinforce the Paris Agreement goal and commit to enhanced action as a matter of survival for vulnerable countries.“Perception on climate change has changed over the years,” said Olivia Adhiambo, Policy and Advocacy Manager at the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance. “Though we may differ on what action to take, the consensus across the world is that the climate has changed, and that someone somewhere has caused the problem. Climate change is no longer an isolated scientific and environmental issue, it has dimensions in all human development indicators.”Adhiambo says PACJA believes that climate change is a poverty issue because it has exacerbated poverty in the world; an equity issue because it disproportionately affects the poor nd vulnerable countries and sectors of the society, and a justice issue because it was caused by rich people and the poor are mostly affected.For the last nine days, delegates have been negotiating the various technical issues under the UNFCCC technical and implementation bodies, the Subsidiary Body for implementaion (SBI), and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA). Key among the issues discussed include climate finance, a key enabler to the implementation of the Paris Agreement, importance of Agriculture to developing country parties in terms of adaptation, the finalization of the Paris Rule book for implementation, and increasing climate ambition through the Talanoa dialoge regarding emission cuts. This is view of the fact that the current collective pledges made under the Paris Agreement, are not enough to meet the target of limiting global temperature rise to below 1.5 oC. In fact, according to the analysis, even a full implementation of current unconditional and conditional Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) makes a temperature increase of at least 3oC by 2100 very likely. “In a world that is already warmer by about 1ºC, people and communities around the world are already facing serious threats to their human rights,” said Sebastien Duyck, Senior Attorney, Center for International Environmental Law, during a climate action event organsied by both the north and south civil society groups.In line with a human rights approach, Duyck said the survival of the most exposed to the impacts of climate-related natural disasters is already at risk while the growing temperature undermines the rights to food, water and livelihood of millions. “These human rights impacts will only grow in magnitude with the increase of temperatures - undermining the ability of the most vulnerable States to protect their own people. Keeping the increase of temperatures below 1.5ºC is a necessity to protect human rights,” he added.The gender face of…