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{
    "id": 615503,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/615503/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 95,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. A.T. Anyanga",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 1321,
        "legal_name": "Andrew Toboso Anyanga",
        "slug": "andrew-toboso-anyanga"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. I need to add my voice to this very important Sessional Paper No.12 of 2014 with regard to the conservation of riparian areas. Just like many of my colleagues have alluded, the integrity and the lives of Kenyans and, indeed, the entire mankind, rely on the availability of clean water for existence and support of life. As a country, we are not short of policies and laws that preserve the environment. The problem that we have had over time is the fact that most of the Government agencies that have been created to preserve the environment seem to be pre-occupied with administrative issues, other than with the implementation of the laws that they were created to implement. In most rural areas in Kenya, over the last 10 to 20 years, most of the natural springs and rivers have dried up. Therefore, even as we talk about preservation of wetlands, another thing that must also be taken into consideration is how that is related to the catchment areas. Indeed, it is the catchment areas that ultimately provide water and support the wetlands. As much as we are talking about the preservation of the wetlands, we must also ask ourselves what we are doing with the catchment areas, particularly the water towers. We realise that both in urban and rural settlements, people are moving to settle in lower areas and, as a result, when we have rains like the El Nino, there are landslides and mudslides and settlements are washed away. That is because people have settled in areas that are ideally not fit for human settlement, namely, the riparian areas. It is so ironical that during the colonial days, we had very strict laws that were controlling how far one would interfere with the riparian areas. I remember even in my village, you were not allowed to farm beyond 30 metres from the river. Most of those areas were wet. You would find a lot of fish and all that, something that is not in existence today. Even as we talk about that, there is another challenge that seems to be common with the preservation of the wetlands. This is the problem of disposal of solid waste. Even in those areas where you find some form of water in the rivers, the water is not fit for human consumption or for any form of consumption. It cannot support aquatic life and human life because of excessive pollution either from solid waste or from other forms of farm inputs like fertilisers that are used upstream. I hope that this policy is going to address these kinds of challenges. When you look at the kind of development that is taking place, particularly in urban areas, we are extremely, as a country, obsessed with real estate development. Real estate development seems to absolutely not respect the fact that we need to preserve nature. We cannot exist as a society if we do not balance life in the wetlands plus the real estate development. So, I fully support the Sessional Paper and I hope that we are going to implement everything in it to the very letter. Thank you."
}