This is the old United Nations University website. Visit the new site at http://unu.edu
Kenya
is located on the Equator and is bisected by the Western side of the Great Rift
Valley. The country lies between latitudes 5o North and 5o
south and between longitudes 34o and 42o east. The land
area of Kenya is about 569,137 km2, with a great diversity of
landforms ranging from glaciated mountain peaks with permanent snow cover,
through a flight of plateaus to the coastal plain. The country is split by the
Great Rift Valley into the Western part, which slopes down into Lake Victoria
from the Mau ranges and Mount Elgon (4,300m) and the eastern part dominated by
Mt. Kenya and the Aberdare ranges which rise to altitudes of 5,200m and 4,000m
respectively.
Kenya has continued to experience
socio-economic pressures such as inequitable patterns of land ownership, a high
population growth rate, rural-urban migration of the population, poorly planned
urbanization, deforestation, a low level of literacy, low growth of domestic
product and high levels of unemployment. Economic performance has deteriorated
over recent years with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate falling
from 4.8% in 1995 to 1.8% in 1998.
The
Government has adopted long, medium and short-term policies to reverse these
trends. The long-term policy framework is contained in the Sessional Paper No.2
of 1996 on Industrial Transformation by the year 2020 and the National Poverty
Eradication Plan 1999-2015. The former presents policies that will lay the
foundation for transforming Kenya into a Newly Industrialized Country (NIC) by
the year 2020. The latter provides a national policy and institutional
framework for action against poverty.
The
medium-term policy framework is contained in the eighth National Development
Plan 1997-2001. It focuses on raising economic growth and investment levels,
promoting export-oriented industries and restructuring the role of government
to focus on providing an enabling environment for economic growth. Kenya’s short-term
policy framework is outlined in Policy Framework Papers (PFP) and annual budget
statements.
The
population of Kenya is projected to increase to 33.3 million by 2003 and 34.6
million by 2005. The projections assume a moderate decline in fertility and
death rates, and also take into account the AIDS epidemic (Okeyo, et al.,
1999). Despite a remarkable decrease over the past decade, Kenya’s annual
population growth rate is still one of the highest in the world at 2.6 %. This
has three major implications. Firstly,
over 50% of the population is less than 15 years of age, which means that the
economy has to support a large and growing number of young people. Secondly, population growth rates in densely
populated regions have led to rural-urban migration. This has over-stretched resources in the urban areas. Decreasing standards of land management,
infrastructure, water and sanitation and municipal services have led to a
steady decline on health and environmental standards as well as an increased
vulnerability to human-made and natural disasters. Thirdly, there has also been a noticeable rural-rural migration
to the ASAL areas, affecting the ecosystem of these regions and rendering them
more vulnerable to disasters such as drought and environmental degradation.
The
impact of disasters on the population is greatly influenced by the incidence of
poverty. The ability to cope with
disasters or the level of a community’s disaster management capacity can be
greatly limited by the incidence of poverty in the community.
According
to the 1994 Welfare Monitoring Survey (WMS II) results, 48% of the rural
population is food poor (NPEP, 1999-2015).
Equally, in the same report, 47% of the rural population and 29% of the
urban population were identified as absolute poor. A large number of the poor are living on either subsistence
agriculture or employment in the urban informal sector. The condition of poverty is illustrated by
factors such as large families, lack of productive skills, low levels of
education, ill health, high incidence of AIDS and other disabilities and
changes in social structures leading to the breakdown of facilities and support
systems. These factors radically
increase the vulnerability of the poor to natural hazards and human-made
disasters. The recent El Niño
(1997-1998) and the heavy rains of 1999 show that those most affected by these
natural occurrences are the poorer sectors of the population living in slums
and squatting along flood and landslide areas. Poverty also seriously affects their resilience to disasters given
the constant challenge for survival, which many face.
One-third
of the rural households are female headed, with as many as 60% of these having
no male support. Female-headed
households are especially vulnerable due to external factors such as the
discriminatory access to the tenure of land in rural areas, housing in
urbanized areas and their inability to access the job market on favorable
conditions.
The
rate of urbanization in Kenya is one of the highest in the world. While the estimated annual rate of growth of
the urban population in Kenya is at 7.05% for the period of 1995-2000, the
average for African cities is 4.37% and 2.57% for the world. This has over-stretched the capacity of
infrastructure and services in the large towns, to the extent that large
sectors of the population have to squat or live in slums, exposing themselves
to numerous hazards such as floods, fires and epidemics. More than half of the urban residents live
in poverty. They dwell in peripheral
urban areas, have limited incomes, education, and poor diets and live in
unsanitary and overcrowded conditions.
Safe drinking water, the disposal of solid waste, decent housing and
transportation are particularly lacking.
Urban residents are exposed to increased levels of contamination from
factories where environmental protection is minimal. Poor construction and the unplanned nature of these informal
settlements expose dwellers to the effects of landslides and flooding.
Kenya
is characterized by its limited natural resources especially for water,
minerals and agricultural land. This
condition, associated to the fragility of its ecosystems and vulnerability to
increased pressure by human activities, raises critical environmental issues
related to bio-diversity, deforestation, desertification, drought, floods and
pollution. Forest resources and soil
cover are being depleted due to the rapid increase in population and the demand
for human settlements and agricultural land, grazing, sourcing of construction
materials, food, fuel-wood, essential oils and herbal medicines.
1.7 About this study
The
UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) in cooperation with the National Center for
Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder Colorado, USA, was awarded a grant by
the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) to carry out a
19-month study on the impacts of the 1997-98 El Niño event on sixteen countries
in four major areas. These areas included Asia, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan
Africa, and Latin America. These countries are Peru, Fiji, Costa Rica, Cuba,
Vietnam, China, Indonesia, Ecuador, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Paraguay,
Panama Canal, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Ecuador, and Kenya.
The
study runs from May 15,1999 to December 15, 2000. This study is a partnership
among United Nations agencies. In addition to UNEP and NCAR's Environmental and
Societal Impacts Group there are the World Meteorological Organization's World
Climate Program (WMO), The International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction
(IDNDR – now the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction: ISDR), and the
United Nations University's Environment and Sustainable Development Programme.
This
assessment will review forecasts and impacts of the 1997-98 El Niño, as well as
the climate-related early warning and natural disaster preparedness systems in
the selected countries in order to improve their ENSO coping mechanisms. Based
on this assessment, the project will identify research and policy needs and
develop preliminary guidelines for regional and national natural disaster
preparedness plans for ENSO warm and cold events and their impacts.
The review and
assessment will form the basis for:
·
Identifying policy needs which can then be developed or
incorporated into appropriate operational disaster management and research
programs. This would include, but would not be limited to, those relating to
the potential yet-to-be-identified linkages between ENSO and climate change.
·
Developing a preliminary set of guidelines for national and
regional preparedness for ENSO.
·
Designing a capacity-building program for fellowship and training
of mid-level resource and sector managers, post-graduate education, and
outreach to the international academic and scientific community.
Through
an improved understanding of early warning, the project ultimately contributes to
the safety and welfare of people and the environment by enhancing preparedness
for the impacts of future ENSO events.
This
review and assessment study in Kenya, was carried out between the months of
September 1999 and February 2000. Data and reports from Government Ministries
and especially from the National Disaster Co-ordination Center, related to the
1997-98 El Niño were available to the working Group. A national workshop was
held on February 4th, 2000 where members of the technical working
group presented their findings. Representatives from the various Government
Ministries and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) were invited to this
workshop. Their contributions and suggestions have, as much as possible, been
taken into consideration in this final report.