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"content": "As I conclude, we got rather surprising news yesterday from the Minister for Forestry and Wildlife, that in the 1930s, the gazetted forests in this country were in the region of 93,000 hectares. Between 1930 and as of today, we lost about 63,000 hectares in one year; in 2001. I do not think we should be surprised today that we are going through what we are going through in terms of the implications of the abuse of our environment. I mention that because the issues that we have been dealing with in my Committee are cross-cutting: The issues of land, relationship of land to forests, wildlife, water, climate change and the environment. We want to ask the sectoral Ministries to do all they can to help preserve our environment and help our people understand the dangers of an environment that has been abused; whether it has been abused by those in power as has happened before or it has been abused by our people. One of the greatest shocks I heard during the campaign was going round and seeing a constituency I thought I knew only to discover the amount of trees that had been cut. We can all see the implications of that in terms of the livelihood of people as you meet them; the poverty on their faces! Even the fact that they do not have enough water can be seen on their faces. There is a sense of dryness on the body as you look at peopleâs skins. We have been told that water is life! Forests are life. Land is also life. All these sub-sectors are key to development. A study done not many years ago revealed that the next battle in the globe that we live in today will revolve around water. I think we have started seeing that happen. We support every position that we have taken that more money be allocated to the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, the Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources and the Ministry of Lands. The Ministry of Lands produces Kshs6 billion, but it gets from the Treasury about Kshs2.5 billion. This Ministry needs this money so that it can adopt the land policy and implement it."
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