Communities in Taita Taveta set to benefit from climate change adaptation projects

Communities in Taita Taveta County are set to benefit from several projects for climate change adaptation set to be launched Monday.

The function will be presided over by Taita Taveta Member of Parliament Naomi Shaban as well as World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-Kenya) CEO Mohamed Awer.

The projects to be launched include the Ndilidau dispensary, Salaita borehole and Lumi borehole.

These projects which are in the Tsavo Conservation area stand out from other ordinary dispensaries and boreholes because they are all solar-powered.

In the Ndilidau dispensary, hundreds of lives have so far been saved as it primarily serves as a maternity wing though it also has an outpatient facility.

In recent years before the solarization of the facility, the dispensary incurred massive costs because they run the facility on electricity. For example, costs in a month sometimes run up to Ksh 15,000 to operate the sterilization machine which is also known as an autoclave.

In some cases, before solarization, the dispensary was being forced to transport their equipment to Taita Taveta Hospital for sterilization hence crippling hospital functions.

With the incorporation of solar panels in the facility, the bills have since been reduced to less than Ksh 4,000 which gives the management a chance to allocate the much-needed resources to the most urgent needs.

The dispensary is also now able to sterilize its equipment in-house.

In addition to having a functioning sterilization machine, the facility is now able to efficiently make use of their resuscitaire infant incubator, suction machine and their oxygen machine.

On the other hand, the two solar-powered boreholes have improved the communities’ lives because they have mainly reduced the human-wildlife conflict situation faced especially during the dry season.

The Tsavo Conservation area is mainly a semi-arid area which is water-scarce. With the boreholes being readily available, the communities can now use the water for domestic use, for their animals and also to do small scale irrigation in their various communities.

The projects were funded in partnership with the WWF-Kenya and the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development.

These projects in the Tsavo Conservation area have positively impacted the livelihoods of the local people as a way of enhancing their ability to adapt to climate change and coexist peacefully and beneficially with wildlife.