Kenya briefings
...poverty, food and energy in a changing climate
...poverty, food and energy in a changing climate
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| The town of Kibera © Peter Armstrong |
Poverty reduction in Kenya has taken a back seat during a tortuous period of political reconciliation and reform. Hopes of establishing new social and economic priorities, backed by recognized standards of governance, are justifiably placed in the new constitution. Swift delivery of its provisions could be the catalyst for Kenya to escape the clutches of successive humanitarian emergencies, creating space for conventional long term development strategies.
updated July 2011
Poverty Reduction
In the 1992 baseline year for the Kenyan Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 45% of the population lived below the poverty line (based on the cost of food and essential non-food items).
This rate had not changed at all by the time of the most recent Integrated Household Budget Survey conducted in 2005/06. And a 2010 UNDP report expresses the view that “poverty is still at 2006 levels.” The MDG target of halving poverty by 2015 therefore presents Kenya with an almost impossible task.
Explanations for this persistent poverty rate are not hard to identify. Compounding the hardship of escalating world food prices and recession, violence that followed the disputed general election of December 2007 displaced 650,000 people and disrupted the 2008 farming cycle. Since then, Kenyans have wrestled with successive years of drought, culminating in the 2011 Horn of Africa humanitarian emergency.
This period has also coincided with increasing domestic and international awareness of the depth of corrupt Kenyan governance. This not only strips away layers of economic growth that might otherwise have benefited the poor but also jeopardises the release of foreign aid.
Kenya’s Medium Term Plan 2008-2012 admits that these shortcomings in the political arena are a barrier to human and economic development. A new constitution, approved by referendum in August 2010, does get to grips with the issues and brings new hope of a fairer society.
The constitution tackles the embedded culture of tribal patronage by devolving power from the president to provincial governments. Corruption will be addressed by a transparent system of checks and balances to review presidential and parliamentary decisions. A new judiciary will be appointed.
Kenya struggles to meet MDG 1, from NTV Kenya
Food Security
Progress
In spite of its glossy brochure image of tourist beaches and safari parks, Kenya remains one of the world’s most serious hunger locations. Having barely recovered from the prolonged drought of 2007-09, the country is once again appealing for international donor support for the Emergency Humanitarian Response Plan for Kenya 2011-2013.
Following the failure of successive seasonal rains in 2010/11, especially in northern and eastern regions, the UN estimates that 3.5 million Kenyans will require food assistance, a figure that may rise before the end of 2011. Reports also warm of a deteriorating urban environment where more than five million Kenyans live in unplanned slums, unable to cope with rising prices.
The UN Development Assistance Framework for Kenya for the period 2009-2013 laments that “the nutrition situation of the country’s children has not improved in the past 20 years.”
These assessments exclude the Somali refugees located in the Dadaab camps in eastern Kenya whose plight is managed as an international refugee crisis, as distinct from Kenya's national food insecurity.
Causes of Food Insecurity
Whilst extreme weather is its immediate cause, the food security crisis in Kenya is the culmination of many years of mismanagement of the agriculture sector and its associated climate risk.
Although over 60% of the country’s households are dependent on agriculture, government expenditure on the sector has rarely risen above 3% of the national budget. Only in 2011 has the government finally approved a significant increase in spending.
Rural economic policies have been fragmented across government departments, resulting in disproportionate subsidies for high value export produce such as tea, coffee and flowers. Traditional farmers have limited access to credit, technical advice or direct financial support.
Poor standards of governance have also undermined the sector. Land rights have been unsettled by overt political gerrymandering. The disaster management policy floundered when the national grain reserve became depleted by corrupt officials.
This is not to deny that the goal of food security has formidable obstacles to overcome. About three-quarters of Kenya's land is arid or semi-arid, the home of up to 10 million pastoral and nomadic people struggling to protect their livestock from persistent drought.
In the ten years to 2009, Kenya’s population increased by 35% to 38.6 million. This rate of growth not only increases demand on productivity but also exposes the shortcomings of the tradition of subdividing land on inheritance.
The average size of about 4 million small farms has been reduced to less than one hectare, with many plots little more than large gardens. This depletion of income potential is the principal cause of rapid urban migration.
The annual cycle of long and short rainy seasons, on which these largely rain-fed smallholdings depend, is notoriously unreliable and prone to extremes, especially when exposed to the periodic El Niño and La Niña climate phenomena. An unusually strong La Niña has been blamed for the 2011 drought.
In the cities, food insecurity is caused by rising prices combined with income poverty. The price of the staple maize doubled in the year to mid-2011 forcing many poor families to spend more than half of their incomes on food.
Policy Failures lead to repeated food emergencies, from NTV Kenya
Solutions
As in many other countries, land reform is critical to improving food security in Kenya. A National Land Policy was passed by parliament in December 2009. It aims to put an end to unscrupulous land appropriation by central and provincial government officials and its subsequent arbitrary distribution.
The vehicle will be an independent National Land Commission tasked with registering land transfers, resolving disputes and ending gender discrimination. New regulations within the Commission’s powers also place limits on rights acquired by foreign buyers and even on the size of private holdings. Parliamentary proceedings to establish the new Commission are proving difficult, little surprise in light of the powerful vested interests involved.
Higher levels of government spending are needed to scale up existing pilot programmes in the agriculture sector. Cash transfers to poor farmers rather than food aid, credit facilities, micro-irrigation, input subsidies and innovative insurance schemes all make a difference.
In a pioneering approach to ending hunger, the Consumer Federation of Kenya (COFEK), has applied to the High Court for enforcement of article 43 of the new constitution which guarantees every Kenyan’s right to “be free from hunger, and to have adequate food of acceptable quality.”
COFEK asserts that high food and fuel prices undermine this protection. Judgment is pending but the government has removed tariffs on imported maize in an attempt to reduce its price.
Longer term development plans for the rural economy have been drawn up in Kenya’s Agricultural Sector Development Strategy 2010–2020. They envisage an evolution from subsistence to commercial models of farming, with significant private sector involvement.
Costs for the first five years alone total $3 billion. Kenya’s application to the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), the vehicle set up to implement pledges made by major donor countries at the 2009 L’Aquila Summit, has been unsuccessful.
A comparison of government commitment to agriculture in Kenya and Malawi, from ActionAid International
Climate Change
Effects of Climate Change
The disappearance of the glaciers of Mount Kenya is symbolic of the impact of climate change in Kenya. It also illustrates how the relationship between cause and effect is less than straightforward.
Although much accentuated in the last 20 years, the glacier retreat seems likely to have commenced early in the 20th century. Recent human deforestation of the lower slopes has also played a part by altering the local ecosystem and micro-climate. This combination of climate change acting on an environment already degraded by human pressures is the common pattern in Kenya.
For example, rising sea levels will gradually increase the risk of serious flooding in the city of Mombasa and the surrounding coastal region. The human impact will be considerable because unplanned slum settlements are expanding rapidly and are located in the most vulnerable areas.
A 2010 study by the Tyndall Centre estimates that 190,000 people and $470 million of assets in the city are currently at risk of an extreme storm surge. The port of Mombasa is the vital transit point for East Africa’s many landlocked countries.
Average temperatures in Kenya have risen by 1.0° since 1960, a rate of increase which is very likely to continue. Both coffee and tea plantations could be affected as early as 2020 – these plants experience stress in abnormally hot conditions. Tea accounts for a quarter of Kenya’s exports.
Rising temperatures will also extend the potential mosquito habitat to higher altitudes where a significant proportion of the Kenyan population lives. This could expose an additional 5.8 million people to significant risk of malaria by 2050, according to a “conservative estimate” by the Stockholm Environment Institute.
Whilst mosquitoes face no obstacles to migration in response to a shifting ecosystem, this is not the case for those species of wildlife attracting tourism revenues in Kenya. The demarcation between protected game reserves and human habitation is already a source of stress – the animals will have nowhere to go if climate change affects their habitat.
Projections of rainfall and extreme weather events are proving more complex. Recent research contradicts predictions of increasing rainfall in the official 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, most studies agree that the frequency of extreme events, whether drought or flood, is likely to increase, posing high risks for crops and livestock.
Highland malaria in Kenya, from IRIN Films
Adaptation
Kenya’s first task is to tackle its adaptation deficit, the inability of poor farming communities to cope with existing climate variability. Adaptation in this context equates with added resolve in delivering strategies to achieve food security and poverty reduction.
The prospect of persistent droughts will force farmers and pastoralists to contemplate adaptation options which overturn deep cultural traditions. Herders are being persuaded to settle as farmers and to focus on more resourceful livestock such as goats and chickens.
Arable farmers may have to sacrifice the familiar maize crop because it lacks resilience in dry conditions. Diversification into indigenous crops such as sorghum and millet, or the increasingly popular potato, is gaining acceptance.
Commercial interests are promoting the attributes of genetically-modified maize but resistance to GM crops at community level remains strong.
Adaptation in the coastal region has an unusual head start as a consequence of the 2004 Indonesian tsunami whose effects were felt as far away as the East African coast. There is already resolve within Kenya to restore the natural defences of the coastline through reforestation. More difficult will be the introduction of environmental regulations designed to protect settlements and industrial development in Mombasa against the threat of flooding.
Central government can support climate change adaptation by upgrading meteorological forecasting, early warning services and disaster risk management. Kenya launched its Climate Change Response Strategy at the 2009 UN Copenhagen conference, appealing for $3 billion to start up its adaptation programme.
The Stockholm Environment Institute study published at the same time provided a degree of support for this optimistic bid. Its upper estimate suggests that Kenya needs $500 million per annum from 2012 for its fight against climate change, rising to $2 billion per annum in 2030. International donor funding for climate adaptation in Kenya is as yet negligible in relation to such aspirations.
Crop Diversity and Food Security in Kenya: interview with Dr John Thompson, Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies
Deforestation
Kenya’s closed canopy indigenous forest cover is largely divided between five highland “water tower” areas. Total coverage is now less than 2% of the country’s land area.
The causes of deforestation in Kenya are “slash and burn” expansion of agriculture, the unsustainable use of wood for charcoal production and household fuel, and forest management which is either non-existent or abused for political purposes.
These problems and their consequences have come into the sharpest possible focus in the uncontrolled clearance of the Mau Forest, recognised throughout Kenya and beyond as an ecological disaster. A quarter of the forest has been lost in the space of 15 years, damaging the natural conservation of the water cycle. The livelihoods of more than 10 million people in Kenya and Tanzania are affected by the diminishing levels of 12 rivers and 5 lakes dependent on the forest.
Successive administrations of presidents Moi and Kibaki are reported to have regarded the Mau forest as a warehouse of treats for securing loyalty. Over 20,000 plots are believed to have been gifted to potential allies, triggering a scramble for logging and farm clearance.
The current prime minister, Raila Odinga, faces the unenviable task of reversing this indulgence. Eviction, resettlement and compensation issues are inevitably mired in disputes over the legitimacy of title. Caught in the middle are more than 10,000 families of the Ogiek tribe who claim the forest as their ancestral home.
The government is seeking to legitimise its broader forest strategy with funding from the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. The aim is to fulfil the requirements of the proposed global scheme for “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” (REDD).
Deep institutional reform will be required to meet REDD conditions but success would pave the way to substantial international revenues and to restoring Kenyan forest cover to 10%, an ambition referenced in the new constitution.
The Politics of Saving the Mau Forest, from Kenya Citizen TV
Rural Electricity Access
Kenya has admirably green credentials in its profile of electricity generation. Over 50% of capacity is sourced from hydropower whilst 13% comes from the Rift Valley geothermal resource. In 2012, capacity is due to be increased by a quarter thanks to 365 wind turbines installed in the desert near Lake Turkana, a development believed to be the largest wind farm in Africa.
There are however many shortcomings. Overall capacity is far short of the needs of the Kenyan economy and the grid reaches only 10% of rural households. Watershed problems combined with the drought have aggravated the shortages, exposing the risks of overdependence on hydropower.
The government has major investment plans to exploit the undoubted potential in geothermal, notably through the $1.4 billion Kenya Electricity Expansion Project. This programme promises to include remote rural regions amongst the 1.5 million people it aims to reach by 2015.
But for most rural areas the only practical hope for graduating from wood fuel dependence lies in modern micro-renewable energy devices. There is a developed market in solar systems, reaching 4% of rural households, but there is evidence that poorer families are unable to contemplate the investment.
Bringing Solar to Mama Sarah Obama, from Greenpeace Video
In the 1992 baseline year for the Kenyan Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 45% of the population lived below the poverty line (based on the cost of food and essential non-food items).
|
| Anonymous HIV/AIDS question box for Kisumo schoolkids, Kenya © Peter Armstrong |
Explanations for this persistent poverty rate are not hard to identify. Compounding the hardship of escalating world food prices and recession, violence that followed the disputed general election of December 2007 displaced 650,000 people and disrupted the 2008 farming cycle. Since then, Kenyans have wrestled with successive years of drought, culminating in the 2011 Horn of Africa humanitarian emergency.
This period has also coincided with increasing domestic and international awareness of the depth of corrupt Kenyan governance. This not only strips away layers of economic growth that might otherwise have benefited the poor but also jeopardises the release of foreign aid.
Kenya’s Medium Term Plan 2008-2012 admits that these shortcomings in the political arena are a barrier to human and economic development. A new constitution, approved by referendum in August 2010, does get to grips with the issues and brings new hope of a fairer society.
The constitution tackles the embedded culture of tribal patronage by devolving power from the president to provincial governments. Corruption will be addressed by a transparent system of checks and balances to review presidential and parliamentary decisions. A new judiciary will be appointed.
Kenya struggles to meet MDG 1, from NTV Kenya
Food Security
Progress
In spite of its glossy brochure image of tourist beaches and safari parks, Kenya remains one of the world’s most serious hunger locations. Having barely recovered from the prolonged drought of 2007-09, the country is once again appealing for international donor support for the Emergency Humanitarian Response Plan for Kenya 2011-2013.
|
| Food reserves in western Kenya © Peter Armstrong |
The UN Development Assistance Framework for Kenya for the period 2009-2013 laments that “the nutrition situation of the country’s children has not improved in the past 20 years.”
These assessments exclude the Somali refugees located in the Dadaab camps in eastern Kenya whose plight is managed as an international refugee crisis, as distinct from Kenya's national food insecurity.
Causes of Food Insecurity
Whilst extreme weather is its immediate cause, the food security crisis in Kenya is the culmination of many years of mismanagement of the agriculture sector and its associated climate risk.
Although over 60% of the country’s households are dependent on agriculture, government expenditure on the sector has rarely risen above 3% of the national budget. Only in 2011 has the government finally approved a significant increase in spending.
Rural economic policies have been fragmented across government departments, resulting in disproportionate subsidies for high value export produce such as tea, coffee and flowers. Traditional farmers have limited access to credit, technical advice or direct financial support.
Poor standards of governance have also undermined the sector. Land rights have been unsettled by overt political gerrymandering. The disaster management policy floundered when the national grain reserve became depleted by corrupt officials.
|
| Dead and dying animals in Arbajahan, northern Kenya © Brendan Cox / Oxfam International/Flickr |
In the ten years to 2009, Kenya’s population increased by 35% to 38.6 million. This rate of growth not only increases demand on productivity but also exposes the shortcomings of the tradition of subdividing land on inheritance.
The average size of about 4 million small farms has been reduced to less than one hectare, with many plots little more than large gardens. This depletion of income potential is the principal cause of rapid urban migration.
The annual cycle of long and short rainy seasons, on which these largely rain-fed smallholdings depend, is notoriously unreliable and prone to extremes, especially when exposed to the periodic El Niño and La Niña climate phenomena. An unusually strong La Niña has been blamed for the 2011 drought.
In the cities, food insecurity is caused by rising prices combined with income poverty. The price of the staple maize doubled in the year to mid-2011 forcing many poor families to spend more than half of their incomes on food.
Policy Failures lead to repeated food emergencies, from NTV Kenya
Solutions
As in many other countries, land reform is critical to improving food security in Kenya. A National Land Policy was passed by parliament in December 2009. It aims to put an end to unscrupulous land appropriation by central and provincial government officials and its subsequent arbitrary distribution.
The vehicle will be an independent National Land Commission tasked with registering land transfers, resolving disputes and ending gender discrimination. New regulations within the Commission’s powers also place limits on rights acquired by foreign buyers and even on the size of private holdings. Parliamentary proceedings to establish the new Commission are proving difficult, little surprise in light of the powerful vested interests involved.
Higher levels of government spending are needed to scale up existing pilot programmes in the agriculture sector. Cash transfers to poor farmers rather than food aid, credit facilities, micro-irrigation, input subsidies and innovative insurance schemes all make a difference.
In a pioneering approach to ending hunger, the Consumer Federation of Kenya (COFEK), has applied to the High Court for enforcement of article 43 of the new constitution which guarantees every Kenyan’s right to “be free from hunger, and to have adequate food of acceptable quality.”
COFEK asserts that high food and fuel prices undermine this protection. Judgment is pending but the government has removed tariffs on imported maize in an attempt to reduce its price.
Longer term development plans for the rural economy have been drawn up in Kenya’s Agricultural Sector Development Strategy 2010–2020. They envisage an evolution from subsistence to commercial models of farming, with significant private sector involvement.
Costs for the first five years alone total $3 billion. Kenya’s application to the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), the vehicle set up to implement pledges made by major donor countries at the 2009 L’Aquila Summit, has been unsuccessful.
A comparison of government commitment to agriculture in Kenya and Malawi, from ActionAid International
Climate Change
Effects of Climate Change
The disappearance of the glaciers of Mount Kenya is symbolic of the impact of climate change in Kenya. It also illustrates how the relationship between cause and effect is less than straightforward.
|
| Maasai farmers protest against climate change © Practical Action |
For example, rising sea levels will gradually increase the risk of serious flooding in the city of Mombasa and the surrounding coastal region. The human impact will be considerable because unplanned slum settlements are expanding rapidly and are located in the most vulnerable areas.
A 2010 study by the Tyndall Centre estimates that 190,000 people and $470 million of assets in the city are currently at risk of an extreme storm surge. The port of Mombasa is the vital transit point for East Africa’s many landlocked countries.
Average temperatures in Kenya have risen by 1.0° since 1960, a rate of increase which is very likely to continue. Both coffee and tea plantations could be affected as early as 2020 – these plants experience stress in abnormally hot conditions. Tea accounts for a quarter of Kenya’s exports.
Rising temperatures will also extend the potential mosquito habitat to higher altitudes where a significant proportion of the Kenyan population lives. This could expose an additional 5.8 million people to significant risk of malaria by 2050, according to a “conservative estimate” by the Stockholm Environment Institute.
Whilst mosquitoes face no obstacles to migration in response to a shifting ecosystem, this is not the case for those species of wildlife attracting tourism revenues in Kenya. The demarcation between protected game reserves and human habitation is already a source of stress – the animals will have nowhere to go if climate change affects their habitat.
Projections of rainfall and extreme weather events are proving more complex. Recent research contradicts predictions of increasing rainfall in the official 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, most studies agree that the frequency of extreme events, whether drought or flood, is likely to increase, posing high risks for crops and livestock.
Highland malaria in Kenya, from IRIN Films
Adaptation
Kenya’s first task is to tackle its adaptation deficit, the inability of poor farming communities to cope with existing climate variability. Adaptation in this context equates with added resolve in delivering strategies to achieve food security and poverty reduction.
The prospect of persistent droughts will force farmers and pastoralists to contemplate adaptation options which overturn deep cultural traditions. Herders are being persuaded to settle as farmers and to focus on more resourceful livestock such as goats and chickens.
|
| Selling potatoes in Nairobi © Julius Mwelu / IRIN News |
Commercial interests are promoting the attributes of genetically-modified maize but resistance to GM crops at community level remains strong.
Adaptation in the coastal region has an unusual head start as a consequence of the 2004 Indonesian tsunami whose effects were felt as far away as the East African coast. There is already resolve within Kenya to restore the natural defences of the coastline through reforestation. More difficult will be the introduction of environmental regulations designed to protect settlements and industrial development in Mombasa against the threat of flooding.
Central government can support climate change adaptation by upgrading meteorological forecasting, early warning services and disaster risk management. Kenya launched its Climate Change Response Strategy at the 2009 UN Copenhagen conference, appealing for $3 billion to start up its adaptation programme.
The Stockholm Environment Institute study published at the same time provided a degree of support for this optimistic bid. Its upper estimate suggests that Kenya needs $500 million per annum from 2012 for its fight against climate change, rising to $2 billion per annum in 2030. International donor funding for climate adaptation in Kenya is as yet negligible in relation to such aspirations.
Crop Diversity and Food Security in Kenya: interview with Dr John Thompson, Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies
Deforestation
Kenya’s closed canopy indigenous forest cover is largely divided between five highland “water tower” areas. Total coverage is now less than 2% of the country’s land area.
|
| Deforestation on Mount Kenya, by treesftf © Flickr |
These problems and their consequences have come into the sharpest possible focus in the uncontrolled clearance of the Mau Forest, recognised throughout Kenya and beyond as an ecological disaster. A quarter of the forest has been lost in the space of 15 years, damaging the natural conservation of the water cycle. The livelihoods of more than 10 million people in Kenya and Tanzania are affected by the diminishing levels of 12 rivers and 5 lakes dependent on the forest.
Successive administrations of presidents Moi and Kibaki are reported to have regarded the Mau forest as a warehouse of treats for securing loyalty. Over 20,000 plots are believed to have been gifted to potential allies, triggering a scramble for logging and farm clearance.
The current prime minister, Raila Odinga, faces the unenviable task of reversing this indulgence. Eviction, resettlement and compensation issues are inevitably mired in disputes over the legitimacy of title. Caught in the middle are more than 10,000 families of the Ogiek tribe who claim the forest as their ancestral home.
The government is seeking to legitimise its broader forest strategy with funding from the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. The aim is to fulfil the requirements of the proposed global scheme for “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” (REDD).
Deep institutional reform will be required to meet REDD conditions but success would pave the way to substantial international revenues and to restoring Kenyan forest cover to 10%, an ambition referenced in the new constitution.
The Politics of Saving the Mau Forest, from Kenya Citizen TV
Rural Electricity Access
Kenya has admirably green credentials in its profile of electricity generation. Over 50% of capacity is sourced from hydropower whilst 13% comes from the Rift Valley geothermal resource. In 2012, capacity is due to be increased by a quarter thanks to 365 wind turbines installed in the desert near Lake Turkana, a development believed to be the largest wind farm in Africa.
|
| Solar power, rural Kenya © Peter Armstrong |
The government has major investment plans to exploit the undoubted potential in geothermal, notably through the $1.4 billion Kenya Electricity Expansion Project. This programme promises to include remote rural regions amongst the 1.5 million people it aims to reach by 2015.
But for most rural areas the only practical hope for graduating from wood fuel dependence lies in modern micro-renewable energy devices. There is a developed market in solar systems, reaching 4% of rural households, but there is evidence that poorer families are unable to contemplate the investment.
Bringing Solar to Mama Sarah Obama, from Greenpeace Video
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