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{
    "id": 774099,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/774099/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 230,
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    "content": "resources. Therefore, water qualifies as a major resource that we must effectively use without any problem. I wish Sen. (Eng.) Mahamud was here. This is because he was our Ambassador to Egypt and he knows the problems that I had to go through when I was an Ambassador in the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) when we wanted to create towering dams including the Nandi-Koru Dam that Sen. Nyamunga has talked about. Little did we know that within our own Ministry of water, we had hydrologists from Egypt who were measuring the water levels of Lake Victoria. We should bear in mind that more than 60 per cent of water discharged to Lake Victoria comes from Kenya and a small percentage comes from there. We still have these international obligations. We tried to resolve it through the riparian states which include Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan and Egypt but it became a big problem. We might as well get information from the Ministry of Water on what is happening because this is a function that is going to work under their ambit and how we can navigate through those international treaties. I remember at the time when I was dealing with this matter, we had agreed that there would be no more new settlements being opened up in Egypt. This is because we also needed much water in Kenya. We are almost running into scarcity of water. Anyone of you who goes around in your rural setting have seen the number of mothers and little children carrying jerrycans and trying to go to any possible spring which have unfortunately dried up. That includes the boreholes which have been dug by the Ministry of Water. That portends that there is a disaster in the making. Therefore, holding of water; conservation of water, apart from using it for agricultural purposes, will also help us to use it for ourselves in all aspects of our social life and social activity. We will use it for the expansion of our economy through irrigation programmes and through the growth of many cash crops. They are numberless. You need not to limit them. Therefore, it is an important area that will help this country move forward. I had a lot of expectations from the Galana-Kulalu Irrigation Project. For once, I went around and said that Kenya will be a food sufficient country in the not too distant future. Alas, this has not happened. Can we learn some of the lessons on what went wrong in the Galana-Kulalu Irrigation Project so that we can be informed better? We should not just repeat the failures of the past in the subsequent decisions that we make in the establishment of this irrigation Authority. We have a good opportunity and a good chance of learning from our past mistakes and incorporating the new features that will help us to move forward in this irrigation programmes. There was a time we were debating on desertification in the United Nations (UN) Convention in New York and in Nairobi and I was leading the Kenyan delegation as the Ambassador to the UNEP. One of the areas that struck me was when we were moving, the issue of the effects of desertification particularly in Africa. I saw the developed nations seriously oppose that Convention to come into force. This is because they realized that if that Convention came into force, we would have been the beneficiaries of the resource flow from the north to the south. This is because of their mischievous The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate"
}