In Big 4 agenda, food security, health should be paramount

In the good old days, politicians had a habit of advising farmers when to plant in the mistaken belief that this was one way of establishing their development creds. “Plant now that the rains have come,” they would exhort farmers, who were always left befuddled by this advice by neatly suited gentlemen seeking relevance. The farmers were usually surprised at the advice because their grandmothers nearly always got it right without prompting. Today, few politicians would dare utter such inanities – the roasting they would get on social media would be out of this world.

These days, farmers have to rely on the weatherman to tell them what the future holds for them. If he has got it right this time round, then the farmers in Uasin Gishu, Trans Nzoia, Nyeri, Murang’a, Meru, Embu and Tharaka Nithi counties should prepare for above-normal rainfall. And if he gets it wrong, then they will be in for hard times. The irony is, the weatherman cannot be sued for giving misleading information, but anyone else who tries it will be regarded as a quack and jailed. So, those who believe in traditional rainmakers’ ability to change the mysterious ways of nature will have to seek other interventions.

According to the Kenya National Meteorological Authority Act, which is supposed to come into effect next year, “The Authority is not liable for any damage, loss or injury sustained or alleged to have been sustained by any person as a result of such person’s reliance on meteorological information provided by the authority.” This, in layman’s terms, means that if your car is swept away by flash floods after you have been assured by the weatherman that it won’t rain for the next couple of weeks, you are on your own.

This Act has many provisions that are supposed to have an impact on our lives. Besides transforming the old department in the Ministry of Environment to an Authority, the Act also makes the Met autonomous, with a budget of its own. If doing so will improve the way things are done, then by all means upgrade it. But if nothing is done to upgrade the seemingly obsolete devices used for forecasts, then one fails to see why we should celebrate a brand-new outfit that merely joins others that never had any reason to exist.

The only problem with this law is that it does not go far enough in telling us just how different the new outfit will be from the old. For instance, is the new Authority prepared to acquire modern equipment so that its predictions can be a lot more accurate and up-to-date? How come that in this day and age, people are still being caught unawares by floods, landslides, lightning strikes and other disasters, and what recourse do they have if they have been given misleading information?

The department has so far been a lot more reliable in predicting drought in the country and so it still has its uses. The problem has always been that the national and county governments have invariably been too tardy in forward planning, even when told that the rains, for instance, will fail and drought ensue. This is why they always seem to be caught napping and have to resort to fire-fighting tactics when it is too late and people are already starving.

Early this year, the national government declared a drought emergency affecting 23 counties after the short rains failed last year. More than 2.7 million Kenyans had to rely on relief food, but that was not available until a number had starved to death. Now, 15 counties in the north, eastern and even central Kenya are in dire need of food because the long rains were inadequate, or came too late to nurture crops and pasture.

Even if “above-normal rains” are to be expected from next week, this situation is hardly likely to change. How will this country ever escape this vicious cycle of drought, famine and water scarcity followed closely by floods and landslides, especially when other ravages of climate change are put into the equation? Certainly not by creating another bureaucracy and calling it an Authority. I have always felt that among the government’s Big Four agenda, food security and health should be paramount. Nothing else matters as much.

From the mouths of babes:

A 16-year-old Swedish climate change activist, Greta Thunberg, has caused a storm in the rarefied atmosphere of the United Nation’s Climate Action summit by telling off world leaders who have been paying lip service to tackling the climate change crisis.

Said she: “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words... we are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth - how dare you!”

If only Kenyan youth had the courage to say such things to those among their rulers who are busy stealing their future!