Kenya will pay a heavy price if efforts to conserve the environment fail, Prime Minister Raila Odinga has said.

The price, he said would run into billions of shillings and lives lost, a bulk of it paid by the future generation that has not participated in the degradation taking shape today.

"The country risks losing most of the natural attractions that have made it a household name across the globe, if the environmental degradation is not contained." He said.

Addressing a panel on the Economic costs of Climate change in Kenya at the on-going European Development Days in Stockholm, Sweden Friday, the PM said the taste of things to come is already being felt in the form of prolonged droughts and crop failures followed by savage floods and rain storms.

Climate Justice Fund

Raila said that with the Maasai Mara Game Reserve losing its animals and Mt Kenya losing its ice caps, Kenya is at the real risk of losing its appeal to tourists unless the ongoing efforts to tame the degradation succeed.

"Without the Mara game reserve, the ice caps on Mt Kenya, I don't see what we will be telling tourists to come and enjoy in our country. That is why we are appealing to the international community to support our efforts to conserve the environment. But it must begin with our own people rallying to help themselves by supporting initiatives to conserve our environment," the PM said.

Billions will be required for adaptation which the PM said involved addressing the effects and not the causes of the environmental degradations while billions more will go into mitigation of the effects.

The PM asked the developed world to establish a Climate Justice Fund which should be separate from usual aid to the developing world to address environmental conservation.

"We are not going to address environmental concerns through development as usual. That is why there must be a special fund. But we must also educate our people that development as usual will not work for us in the long term. We cannot argue that we must be allowed to degrade the environment because that is the path others took to develop. Two wrongs do not make a right," he said.

Blame game

The PM is in Stockholm largely to build momentum for Africa's stand at the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen.

European Union officials say Kenya's stand in Copenhagen could help break the cycle of blame game that has characterized such talks before and is already building up especially between China, India and Brazil on the one hand and the US on the other.

In discussions on the sidelines of the Stockholm conference, EU President José Manuel Barroso told the PM that Kenya could use its influence on the opposing powers to help the world reach a compromise on climate.

He said Kenya's experiences with the effects of climate change and ties with the nations in the stand off gives it a strong moral voice to influence the talks.


PMPS
Fri, Oct 23, 2009