As Weather Tracks With Climate Scientists' Grim Forecasts, an African Nation Is Awash in Misery
By MICHAEL BURNHAM AND NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD of Greenwire
Published: May 4, 2010
NAIROBI, Kenya -- It's the rainy season, but the sun is still baking the Mathare Valley slum.
A half-million people live in this warren of shacks clustered amid 10 square kilometers of the Mathare River.
When the rains fall, drops spill like marbles on corrugated metal roofs. Narrow alleys swell with murky runoff that flows past open doors and raises the risk of cholera and dysentery.
When the rains fail, as they did for most of last year, a liter of clean water can cost more than petroleum. People who cannot buy water from traveling vendors haul it from the river or steal it from the municipal main.
About half of Nairobi's 3.2 million residents live in such areas that lack municipal water and sewer services. Beatrice Cheptoo is among Mathare's fortunate.
The 26-year-old mother of two pays 100 Kenyan shillings ($1.30) a month to use a privately built water spigot, shower and toilet. Standing near the freshly mopped "Ikotoilet," Cheptoo points up the slope to a field where goats pick through garbage rotting into rust-colored soil.
"Before, we were used to going and practicing open defecation up there," Cheptoo said, broaching a subject that is taboo for many Kenyans.
The poorest of the poor still relieve themselves in the fetid field, and they use the river to bathe and irrigate tiny plots of vegetables. Water is life -- even in this polluted stretch of the Nairobi River Basin. But what happens when the rivers run dry?
Much of Kenya faced that grim reality last year, during what has been called the deepest drought in living memory. The failed rains, followed by flash floods, exacerbated existing water quality and quantity challenges and forced a fractious federal government to reassess the cost, scale and speed of adapting to a warming world.
Two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, water is the molecular compound that binds urban sanitation with energy, tourism, agriculture and other sectors throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
"These negative effects of climate change have threatened the economic stability of the country as more resources have been devoted towards meeting the basic needs and life of Kenyans," warned Ministry of Finance Permanent Secretary Joseph Kinyua in a Nairobi speech late last year. He cited a 2009 Stockholm Environment Institute report that estimates $500 million is needed annually to address Kenya's immediate needs as well as prepare the country for future climate change; annual adaptation costs could approach $2 billion in 2030.
When dust turns to mud
Equatorial Kenya's long rains typically begin in March and continue through May. June through September marks a comparatively cool and dry spell before rains recommence in October.
Most of Kenya did not get much rain, if any, until the final weeks of 2009.
"When we have had droughts in the past, there has not been a failure of rains for as long," observed Charles Musyoki, a senior scientist with the Kenya Wildlife Service, which manages nearly 10 percent of the land in this Texas-sized nation.
Tree limbs and watering holes withered, contributing to the death of as many as 500 elephants, according to the wildlife service. Migratory animals and livestock competed for pastures, spurring Maasai shepherds to encroach upon Nairobi's green spaces.
Water levels in important rivers dropped, forcing the Kenya Electricity Generating Co. to reduce hydropower production. Nairobi endured inflated water prices, intermittent blackouts and electricity rationing.
Crops failed throughout the country, even in the breadbasket region between Nairobi and Lake Victoria.
Heavy rains that began in 2010 proved just as problematic.
Flooding in low-lying areas of the Great Rift Valley caused farmland destruction, death, displacement and disease in December and January. By February, an estimated 3.8 million Kenyans needed emergency food assistance -- a 32 percent increase over a year, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Kenya's agricultural sector is beginning to recover with the onset of the long rains this spring, but some southwestern Kenya farmers are abandoning tradition in the face of unpredictability.
"People used to have organized planting and harvesting sessions, but now it is impromptu," said Jacob Olonde, a native of the agricultural hub of Migori. "People plant by trial and error."
Some farmers have switched from planting maize and other food staples to planting hearty bamboo, the 22-year-old student explained.
"They have never done this before," Olonde added.
Roots of a crisis
Experts who study the nexus of population and the environment contend that climate change is only partly to blame for Kenya's water woes.
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