‘Water is like gold’
Hannah Brock spent time in Kenya and reports on the effects of global warming that she saw already happening
The title was a statement by Esther Musili, Ukamba Christian Community Services (UCCS).
Friends seem persuaded of the urgent need to prevent further global warming. What I wish to impress upon you is that while climate change is an issue of livelihoods, peace, security, comfort and, ultimately, survival – it is also a matter of justice. In recent centuries, the industrialisation of Western nations has been the main contributor to huge greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the populations of these states are not the ones feeling the effects of this pollution. Poorer nations, which do not share in the opulent standards of living that we enjoy because of this industrialisation, are suffering first and worst.
I am taking part in Christian Aid’s gap year scheme – a ten-month internship that gets young people engaging other young people about issues of global justice. Christian Aid is not operational. We do not send British personnel abroad to developing countries; we work solely through local partner organisations. This October, along with nineteen other young people on the gap year scheme, I travelled to Kenya for a fortnight to visit two of the six hundred partner organisations that Christian Aid works with, to see their work and understand how they are coping with the effects of climate change.
We spent five days each with Christian Aid’s partners the Ukamba Christian Community Services (UCCS) and the Benevolent Institute of Development Initiatives (BIDI), both based in Eastern province. The last five rainy seasons have failed in this region – that’s insufficient rain for more than two years. People are suffering from poor diet because the staple crops of maize and beans are failing. This particularly disadvantages those people who are HIV-positive, which at the moment stands at eight per cent of the Kenyan population. In most families it is mothers and girl children who have responsibility for collecting water. These women and children walk many kilometres each day to find water sources that have not dried out.
No one is suggesting that water scarcity is anything new in sub-Saharan Africa. What is new is the frequency and severity of the drought. This is Jones (above), a seventy-one-year-old retired English teacher from Kitui. He told us that this is the driest he has ever seen his village. The mango trees have dried up and cattle have died of dehydration, meaning people have to plough the fields manually.
Jones is the secretary of a community-based organisation in Nzauni, which UCCS supports. His group has built a dam near their village, called the Mavulya dam: UCCS gave the materials and the tools and the community provided the labour themselves. The dam (to the right of the photo, below) is a simple barrier for water collection, built at the base of a natural hollow. It collects rainwater, stopping it from running away. Thankfully it had rained the previous weekend, so in this photograph the reservoir had been filled by about a quarter. The dam is four metres deep, and at the base of the reservoir is a pipe to siphon water through a sand filter, which cleanses it, to a pump at the other side. There is both a tap for the villagers and a cattle trough.
UCCS also holds workshops for the Nzauni group called Farmer Field Schools. Here UCCS encourages people to improve their knowledge about foods, so that they may make the best decisions about land use. For example, the most common crops – maize and beans – are not very resistant to drought, but other crops such as water melon, pawpaw and sweet potato are both more drought resistant and more nutritious. With this awareness, farmers often make the choice to use a portion of their land to grow vegetables and fruits. In times of drought, it is crucial that farmers use the land available to them in the most effective fashion, gaining the most energy and nutrition from the crops they grow.
Christian Aid’s approach to social action is two-fold: working with developing communities, such as Nzauni, at a grassroots level, and encouraging activists in Britain to challenge the structures that perpetuate injustice and poverty. When it comes to climate change, campaigners in the West – including Quakers – have embraced their duty to speak truth to power. The upcoming talks in Copenhagen are a rallying point, a space to make the majority world heard. Although some commentators are pessimistic about the capacity for this meeting to produce a legally binding agreement, the event must be used as an opportunity to influence governments of the world.
No one is powerless: there are online petitions to be signed, letters to be sent, cabinet members to be lobbied and The Wave in London and Glasgow on 5 December is likely to be the UK’s biggest ever demonstration in support of action on climate change. These paths of action are well-trodden, and some Friends may feel wearied by a sense of inadequacy (too little, too late?). Don’t lose hope! Christian Aid’s senior adviser for climate change, Eliot Whittington, argues that the UK can act as a force to counter American reticence: ‘The UK and the rest of Europe are at a turning point: will they kill the Kyoto Protocol and water down the climate talks to cater to the US, or will they try to keep the climate ambition as high as possible?’ As such it is critical that as much pressure is exerted on our elected representatives and from as many different groups as possible.
Fiona Dear from Stop Climate Chaos believes that MPs need to get the message that this is an issue that the general public cares about, not merely the concern of a small group of activists. Sheer numbers will go some way towards dispelling this view, as will the involvement of groups other than the usual ‘green’ suspects. UNISON and the NUS have recently become part of the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition, joining more predictable groups such as Friends of the Earth, WWF and the RSPB, as well as faith groups like The Salvation Army, the Church of Scotland and the Iona Community (BYM is not in fact a member of the Coalition).
Having caught a glimpse of the impact of drought, I’ve seen the way that climate change will affect the developing world. Therefore I’ll definitely be standing in solidarity with the people of developing countries, but campaigning in the UK. I hope many Friends will join with me, and ferociously encourage their friends and communities to join with us.
My visit to Kenya reminded me that poverty puts people in a state of constant insecurity; even when you have, you are an inch away from not having. The physical and psychological effects of this are vast and it terrifies me that climate change can only add to the levels of impoverishment. As Nazmul Chodhury from Practical Action in Bangladesh warns: ‘We can forget about making poverty history [because] climate change will make poverty permanent’.
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