2 Aug 2023 in Senate:
Mr. Speaker, Sir, in the value chain spirit, a sustainable waste management plan is a place. We can also employ our young people in the material recovery facilities in the recycling processes that some of the companies are demonstrating right in this city. We can turn our waste into wealth by organising our youth who live around dumpsites in cooperatives. If you look at the Dandora Dump site, for example, we have had serious attempts to deal with it. However, there has been no comprehensive approach to it yet. We know it has been demonstrated in other jurisdictions, that, indeed, ...
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2 Aug 2023 in Senate:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir. Mheshimiwa Sen. Mungatana, allow me to respond in English because I do not know what Mathomba-bruk is in Kiswahili.
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2 Aug 2023 in Senate:
Okay. Thank you, Sen. Mungatana, MGH. We have an ongoing study with NEMA on the subject of rivers changing course and affecting communities in the natural phenomena. That is not an action designed by man. Given time, we can provide that study. I can promise to follow it up with a study visit or by myself because I have not been there; to try and reconcile the study findings and the necessary action that needs to be taken for the people of Tana River County. That also brings forth the fact that our water sources need special attention and I ...
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2 Aug 2023 in Senate:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Sir and Hon. Senator for your question. Yes, schools are one of the major stakeholders in the tree growing initiative. That is where we have free labour from our children; not labour in the street sense of it. Recently, through the Cabinet, we got approval for an institutionalisation plan to institutionalise tree growing within the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) programme in our schools. This will allow a value system developed in our children right from the tender age of school. They shall take environmental conservation and eco- system protection as a core value as they grow up. ...
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2 Aug 2023 in Senate:
Mr. Speaker, Sir, the tree growing initiative is broad and wide beyond the schools programme. I would like to inform the Senate that we have a very elaborate strategy which is targeting various stakeholders. Hon. Senators, the tree growing initiative is not a preserve of the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forestry neither is it a preserve of the national Government. It is an initiative that must be owned by each and every individual Kenyan.
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2 Aug 2023 in Senate:
Mr. Speaker, Sir, the strategy has targets for schools, our county governments, each and every Ministry department and Agency of Government and the private sector in this country because that is the approach that this must take for it to succeed. When I say targets, we have a strategy that goes up to the numbers that we expect of each and every stakeholder to undertake in realising this; schools included since they are a part of it.
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2 Aug 2023 in Senate:
If we are to do the math and divide the 15 billion trees that we need to plant by 2032, it translates to 30 trees per Kenyan per year. That includes myself, the Senators and everybody in this country. We are calling on everybody to take their responsibility. Hon. Senator, please be informed that it is not just the schools, but it is a broad multi stakeholder approach to it.
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2 Aug 2023 in Senate:
With regard to your question, I started off by agreeing that we have a challenge with the illegal activities and wanton destruction of our ecosystems. However, please take note that there is no correlation whatsoever between the lift of the ban on logging and the illegal activities that are ongoing within our forests. This is because the lift on the ban on logging applies only to gazetted commercial plantations. We have a total of 2 million hectares of gazetted forests in this country. The commercial plantations are only 150,000 hectares. So, it is a very small percentage of about six ...
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2 Aug 2023 in Senate:
In that regard, the lift on the ban does not apply to indigenous forests gazetted in this country. It is only about five or six per cent of the commercial plantations.
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2 Aug 2023 in Senate:
On the import of commercial plantations, we have a demand for timber products in this country. We have a timber market in the country that is doing extremely poorly. We are doing importation left, right and centre even for toothpicks. That has an implication to the economy of our country, the job creation we need to do for our young people and on how we want to build our country. The commercial forestry sector is one such sector that we must recast which is a big contributor to our Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
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