From: People For Peace
Colleagues Home & Abroad Regional News
BY FR JOACHIM OMOLO OUKO, AJ
NAIROBI-KENYA
WEDNESDAY, FENRUARY 22, 2012
Today is Ash Wednesday, the day which marks the start of Lent, a period of fasting for Roman Catholics and some Christian sects. It is a time of reflection, a reminder of our mortality which will return to dust when we die. Our mortality then adds urgency to the need for repentance.
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While Lent has traditionally been observed by giving up pleasures, such as alcohol, cigarette, special diets, sweets, etc, churches now encourage the faithful to something during the season that will help others or enrich their spiritual lives.
The Kenya Episcopal Conference -Catholic Justice and Peace Commission in its 2012 Lenten Campaign for example, has in its second week dealt with Food Security. The conference has chosen to deal with this subject since Kenya is currently facing grave food insecurity that threatens the lives of many Kenyans, especially in the semiarid regions. Estimated 4million Kenyans have no food.
On Sunday February 26, the first Sunday of Lent I shall give a talk at Maryknoll Fathers here in Nairobi to the Blessed John Paul II evangelizing Parish teams on climate change and food security. The talk has been arranged by Fr Richard Quinn, the Blessed John Paul II evangelizing Parish teams Director.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni while presiding over fund raising at Great Lakes Region University in Kisumu recently said in order to avert this situation is to exploit agri-business. It was wrong for African countries to keep huge parcels of land idle and yet they were complaining of food deficits.
Elsewhere Museveni has proposed that drip irrigation should be exploited primarily in drought-prone regions to save crops and avert food shortages. Mr Museveni made the remarks while addressing farmers who visited him at his Kisozi ranch recently. Through poverty eradication programme, government should construct water dams.
While food production may benefit from a warmer climate, the increased potential for droughts, floods and heat waves will pose challenges for farmers. Additionally, the enduring changes in climate, water supply and soil moisture could make it less feasible to continue crop production in certain regions.
According to Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Kenya may never realise Vision 2030 unless deliberate measures are placed to mitigate the effects of climate change. He informed the 20th meeting of the National Economic and Social Council in 2010 that the preliminary studies into the development trend since the launch of the target some two years ago indicated that the nation had failed to realise the envisaged level of progress over the period.
A report by the Stockholm Research Institute attributed the worrying scenario to the ripple effects of global warming whose culmination was marred by adverse weather patterns including drought and floods.
The PM who presided over the opening session of the meeting held at a Naivasha hotel insisted that mitigation of climate change and reduction of poverty still remained the key yardstick for the transformation of the country.
Mr Odinga has also recommended plans for the country to embark on green energy initiatives to reduce dependency on oil and other sources of power that were not friendly to the environment.
President Mwai Kibaki on his part wants a long term solution to the problem, including the environmental conservation by initiating comprehensive strategies to protect vital water towers in the country and reforestation programmes.
President Kibaki also wants African countries to present new initiatives aimed at enhancing global dialogue and support for environmental solutions for the good of humanity, priorities for sustainable development, poverty reduction and attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.
Yet changes in the frequency and severity of heat waves, drought and floods, remain a key uncertainty in future climate change. Such changes are anticipated by global climate models, but regional changes and the potential affects on agriculture are more difficult to forecast.
Now that the world has begun to warm, hotter temperatures and rises in sea level “would continue for centuries” no matter how much humans control their pollution.
Water towers such as the Cherangany, Mount Kenya, the Aberdare ranges and Mt. Elgon are drying. They are drying up due to the shrinking forests.
Agroforestry alone could remove 50 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the next 50 years, meeting about a third of the world’s total carbon reduction challenge.
As humans continue adding gasses to the air, warming is likely to continue through this century, especially the humidity in the air we breathe- low or polluted humidity. Low or polluted humidity can lead to dry eye, visual impairment and malignant melanoma.
Water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas. Because of its abundance in the atmosphere, water vapor causes about two-thirds of greenhouse warming. As temperatures warm, the atmosphere becomes capable of containing more water vapor, and so water vapor concentrations go up to regain equilibrium.
Clouds cause cooling by reflecting solar energy, but they also cause warming by absorbing infrared energy (like greenhouse gases) from the surface when they are over areas that are warmer than they are.
The amount of water vapor in the air determines how fast each molecule will return back to the surface. When a net evaporation occurs, the body of water will undergo a net cooling directly related to the loss of water.
According to the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, one in three people are already facing water shortages (2007). Around 1.2 billion people, or almost one-fifth of the world’s population, live in areas of physical scarcity, while another 1.6 billion people, or almost one quarter of the world’s population, live in a developing country that lacks the necessary infrastructure to take water from rivers and aquifers (known as an economic water shortage).
There are four main factors aggravating water scarcity: Population growth: in the last century, world population has tripled. It is expected to rise from the present 7 billion to 8.9 billion by 2050.
Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and, although there is no global water scarcity as such, an increasing number of regions are chronically short of water.
Ash Wednesday derives its name from the practice of placing ashes on the foreheads of adherents as a sign of mourning and repentance to God. In future years Ash Wednesday will occur on these dates:
2012 – February 22
2013 – February 13
2014 – March 5
2015 – February 18
2016 – February 10
2017 – March 1
2018 – February 14
2019 – March 6
2020 – February 26
2021 – February 17
2022 – March 2
2023 – February 22
People for Peace in Africa (PPA)
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