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{
    "id": 774646,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/774646/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 205,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Ms.) Tuya",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 926,
        "legal_name": "Roselinda Soipan Tuya",
        "slug": "roselinda-soipan-tuya"
    },
    "content": "First and foremost, the issue of protecting our environment and dealing with the adverse effects of climate change is a direct protection and safeguard of some of the very critical principles of our Constitution of 2010, key of which is the need for us to have a certain minimum threshold of forest cover in our country. Currently, statistics are very dismal. I know we are below two per cent yet the threshold we have set for ourselves, as a nation, stands at 10 per cent. This Policy will go towards supporting our Vision 2030 in terms of increasing our adaptive capacity and resilience to climate change. It is very promising to see that this is a policy that will guide us into a pathway where we will be talking about the need to mobilise both domestic and international climate finance resources and increase financial flows towards mitigating the effects of climate change in Kenya. When we talk about climate change, the speaker before me has stated clearly, and I could not agree more, that the adverse effects of climate change have no choice of who to hit. In fact, the saddest thing for me in this country is the fact that the matter is trivialised into a political issue every time we talk about protecting our natural resources. Speaking from my backyard in Narok County, we have the Mau Forest. Some pictures of the forest were circulating in social media two days ago. I know this kind of policy arose from an assessment which was done through the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change. But we do not even need to do assessments to know that we are standing at a very dicey situation. As a country, as a nation and as a partner within East Africa, Africa and the world, it saddens me that when we talk about the need to protect our natural resources, these issues are trivialised. People begin to talk about politics. When we talk about protecting the Mau Forest, people think we are hitting at one person. We have been told here and it is very clear for all of us that when the Mara River dries, the situation will be bad. I was going to talk about the picture that is circulating even today in social media. The Mara River has dried up and the impact of this is diminished food security. This will not affect one community only. It does not even just affect people who are living next to the Mara River, but affects every individual. We know the Mara River. I am just giving this as an example because we have been given examples of so many other water bodies which are drying up. Some of them are swelling up due to siltation and rising levels of the sea. This one is going to eat into all of us. We will have nowhere for our kids to grow in. I want to support this Policy very boldly and say that most of the resources that we are going to mobilise, both domestically and internationally or from whichever sources, should be pumped into reaching out and doing the simple things that are going to contribute towards increasing our forest cover, even before we talk about the big terminologies of carbon cover and many other things. We need to go back to the basics of what is happening to our forests. When you fly over some of our critical water catchment areas, you will be hurt. It is very devastating. In terms of the adverse effects that have been spoken about like droughts and floods, we do not need any assessment to know they are happening in our country. From my village, I cannot remember the last time I saw rain yet we were able to predict when the rains would come in the past. Farmers would plough their fields in anticipation of the rains. They would very precisely know that the rains would come at a particular time. That has a ripple effect in protecting the food security of our country. We can no longer plan for that because our rains are unpredictable. Our water sources have diminished. Even the quality of our water has diminished. It is time Kenyans woke up and smelt the coffee and knew that we have no place for our children to grow. Even as we support this kind of policy, we should really follow through its implementation. I want to agree with what Hon. Wamalwa said to the Departmental Committee on Environment and Natural Resources and our newly appointed Cabinet Secretary. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}