Leaders should care for the environment
By Editorial.Team, July 18, 2022As Kenya prepares for political transition next month, voters should be advised to critically evaluate the promises made by candidates at both national and county levels, especially with regard to safeguarding natural resources.
Kenya is endowed with a wide variety of natural wealth, from rivers to lakes, forests to wetlands, an ocean shoreline and fauna and flora that are unique. However, the citizens have not benefited from these resources. If anything, the natural wealth is threatened by pollution and degradation, particularly because of poor solid waste disposal that has abetted catastrophes such as plastic pollution of water bodies.
Only last week, experts warned that Lake Victoria is facing a mortal threat from plastic waste, which is choking life out of Africa’s largest fresh water resource. Yet, this is a resource with the potential to improve the lives and economic fortunes of thousands of families who depend on it for fishery, a sub-sector that is yet to hit its full potential.That is why it is important for voters there, and in other counties with such natural assets, to elect leaders who have a solid plan about how such water bodies can be protected so that they can support livelihoods and local economies.
Politics should not only be informed by rivalry between the various formations and candidates. The role of politics is to harness resources for the benefit of citizens. However, because Kenyan politicians and voters have elevated brinkmanship over issues, they are often wont to forget that political leadership is about rational sharing and exploitation of resources for the benefit of current and future generations.
Already, there are reports that many Kenyan plant and animal species are threatened with extinction, largely due to human activity and a poor policy framework. The upshot of this trend is that future generations will be denied the benefits that past and current generations enjoy from this natural wealth. As such, Kenya needs a leadership that is conscious about the need to put in place environment-friendly laws and not just at the national level.We implore voters to examine the manifestos that the various candidates have given to establish what they have pledged to do about protection of the environment. Solid proposals should be given an opportunity to govern and once they win elections, voters should hold them to account so that they implement the promises they have made. As a country, we all owe a duty of care to our natural resources, remembering that we are custodians on behalf of future generations.