from: odhiambo okecth
Friends,
Friends of nature, or rather, people who talk about nature and environment are meeting at Rio De Janeiro in an environm
ental conference that has been dubbed Rio+20.
20 years ago, the World met at Rio and looked at several issues that inform the management of our environment. Several issues were discussed, as they will do from tomorrow, and sadly, 20 years down the line, we have nothing to be proud of since then.
Instead, the World had continued to suffer environmental issues.
The status of the World has degenerated. Global warming has increased. The Ozone Layer is being depleted. The Forest Cover is going down across the world. And man has become the biggest threat to our eco-system. Instead of solving our problems, we have come up with this like Carbon Trading and Green Economy.
Instead of addressing our environmental issues, we have opted for the softer options; coining words and phrases that are vacuous.
Our Towns are getting messier and dirtier and our waters are getting more polluted. The air we breath is becoming thin and congested, yet, we are always in conferences discussing these issues.
Our Towns are getting more dustier and yet, these are things we can effectively mitigate without resorting to words and phrases that are only at best left at those conferences.
Just recently, the World converged in Durban in South Africa, still, they were talking about the same same things. Ask anybody what Durban achieved and you will be shocked; nothing. Words and only words.
I am tempted to ask; for how long will we be talking and conferencing? This is a tough question, because, we have many professionals whose forte is to talk and give more talk. They never implement. We get mountains and mountains of lectures on Nature and Environment, and it stops at that.
Take the example of having a Clean Neighbourhood; Do we really need lectures and conferences on having our Towns Clean? We only need to implement. What if we took the moneys earmarked for these kind of conferences and decided to strengthen our implementation agencies?
We will be able to buy many tracks to cart away our garbage. The cost of such conferencing will strengthen our Councils across Kenya and we will employ more personnel to police our Environmental By-laws. We will buy more Skip Loaders, more tractors, more working implements for the enforcing teams, and the teams will be motivated.
But instead, we have chosen the more easier roots; conferencing.
40 years ago, the United Nations Environment Programme was born as a Programme of the UN. This means, it could not get secure programme and sustained funding to address the Environmental concerns of the World. For 40 years, there have been talks about moving the Unep from Nairobi, about upgrading the Unep, about strengthening her status and about all conceivable issues you may imagine.
For 40 years, the world and her leaders have just been talking.
I want to believe, that as these people converge at Rio in what they are calling Rio+20, solutions will come forth and action will follow.
It will be our wish at The Clean Kenya Campaign- TCKC for Unep to be made a Specialized UN Agency to deal conclusively with matters Environment. A strengthened, upgraded and emboldened Unep will be secure, will have a strong membership that will secure her funding and will work for a sustainable environmental policies across the world.
Her membership at the Security Council of the UN General Assembly will strong and she will have a voice.
Our Leaders often travel the World and I want them to look at us in the eye and tell us if those Towns they visit are as dirty as our Towns. Do those other Towns have mounds of garbage everywhere as our Towns do? Do those Towns have no Water as our Towns do, yet, water is a key necessity to nature.
Do those Towns have pot-holed roads like we do here?
Let Rio+20 be the last of these talking shops. The world is experiencing environmental problems of unmitigated proportions yet, we who have solutions to these issues are only engaged in talking.
Let Rio+20 be the beginning of a structured engagement to re-foresting the world.
Let Rio+20 be the beginning of a pragmatic approach to solving the issue of Solid Waste Management across our Towns.
Let Rio+20 be the beginning of a strengthened Unep, a Unep with the financial ability and power to engage.
Let Rio+20 be the last of these talking shops where people who know the same things gather to share what they all know.
No one will Clean Kenya for us. It must be our responsibility.
Odhiambo T Oketch,
Executive Director,
The Clean Kenya Campaign- TCKC
Tel; 0724 365 557,
Blogspot; http://kcdnkomarockswatch.blogspot.com
The Clean Kenya Campaign; Website-www.kcdnkenya.org