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{
    "id": 97931,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/97931/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 323,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Mr. Ruteere",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 92,
        "legal_name": "Silas Muriuki Ruteere",
        "slug": "silas-ruteere"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker. I also stand here to echo the words of my predecessors in supporting this report. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I would have been very happy if I saw the Ministry of Water and Irrigation here listening, reading or supporting this report; I would have been happy if the Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources was here to participate in the adoption of this report; I would have been very happy if the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife was here to adopt this report. The Ministry of Youth Affairs, for that matter, should have been here, because this report cuts across various social and environmental aspects and is very informative. It gives resolutions that have been adopted elsewhere, and that will have implications in our own country, that we have to implement. The implementing agencies are those Ministries and others that I have not mentioned. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, the delegation did a commendable job. They articulated our issues, our concerns and, above all, they spoke and supported his Excellency, the President, in his agenda of fighting for the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) to be declared a globally accepted environmental body, with full UN status; they did achieve that. That is something we should commend them for, if not for anything else. All delegations, including the time when his Excellency the President, was in Copenhagen where I happened to be together with the presenter of the report, that issue was basic in his report. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, now that we have attained the status, it is now upon the Government to say that it leads by example; that whoever comes here to visit UNEP should see an environmentally-friendly country right from where he lands, either in Mombasa, if he comes by ship, or in the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) if he comes by air; he should see protection of our natural resources, planting of more trees and the rivers that are being cleaned up, like the Nairobi River. They should not be brought back to their former status; recently, when we were interacting with the Minister for Environment and Mineral Resources, he was saying that they had cleaned the whole Nairobi River, but when you go round Racecourse Road, it is back to its former status. Kenyans themselves have not accepted the need for change to see to it that their environment is clean and that, efforts have been made by the Government and the Ministry to see to it that the country is clean. If you drive from here along Waiyaki Way and Nairobi/Nakuru Highway, the fields you used to see in Kangemi are no longer there; you see beautiful trees and the green coming up and you wonder whether it is the same Kangemi which existed six years ago. In my own town in Meru today, where I used to see a lot of bare fields, I have seen a lot of trees planted by the municipal council. So, the environment is friendly. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, the destruction of the forests is almost gone, but it still needs to be controlled, so that the forest cover is as required by the international standards – 10 per cent. That is why we should be supporting this report. We should be supporting the report by action, not by merely standing here and saying “I support the report.” We should support the report here and implement it wherever we are. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, there is a section on environmental degradation, climate change issues; these are the issues that everybody is addressing today in the country. That is why I was surprised that all the Ministries that are involved in this area are not here. I think it is time we took these things seriously. Yesterday, we were crying of famine; we were crying of drought, and right now, we have almost forgotten all that. Even after those very long rains, we did not do much to plant many trees in very many areas. You will find that no seedlings are coming up, yet there was a lot of rainfall. The rivers had swollen up, but they are now declining. So, by the end of September or October, we will be going back to crying of water shortage. We will lament that Nairobi has no water or about the lack of clean water, while we should have done what is necessary when the rains were falling. We should have harvested the water; we should have done enough dams and not concentrated dams in one area. The shortage of water occurs across the country and not in one area. We should have the dams spread across the country. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, as economic and financial issues are discussed, the economic empowerment of our people is also spread out, such that if people are put back to where they come from, they do not go to towns because they are properly empowered wherever they are. They can earn a living and impact positively to the economic development of those areas. Otherwise, this Report has very good resolutions and recommendations. It has a lot about the youth and the issues should be taken up right now and be implemented because we have concerns about the youth. However, we are not being proactive about these concerns. With those few remarks, I beg to support this Report wholeheartedly."
}