GAZI BAY, Kenya (PAMACC News) - Putting on gumboots and armed with clubs and machetes, Hassam Bakari, 44, a forest guard in Makongeni mangrove fishing village at Gazi Bay along Kenya’s coastline slashes through a thick canopy, making his way along a trail of mixed shrub trees in swamps. Hassam is among over 400 community members of the Mikoko Pamoja (in Swahili meaning Mangroves Together) project driving the expansion of Kenya’s first blue carbon credit scheme, providing multiple income generating activities and fighting climate change in the region. “We now protect this area day and night because the livelihood and future of our children depends on these mangroves,” Hassam said during a visit of researchers and environment experts to the mangrove restoration project in the run up to the UN Environment General Assembly on December 2, 2017. Like Hassam, the people of this coastal community say they are giving their all to make the mangrove restoration project a global reference, but for lack of financial means the impetus for expansion and protection is coming from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), via the United Nations Environmental Programme, UNEP. According to Anne Wanjoru, Social impact officer of Mikoko Pamoja, the expansion of the mangrove restoration project had become necessary following increasing acceptance of the population to engage fully in the project. “The population are now willing to voluntarily participate and this is driving the expansion and protection scheme of the project, “Anne said.The expansion phase of the project that started in 2015 with funding of 100.000 dollars from GEF via UNEP has seen the acres of the mangrove forest of Mikoko Pamoja increase by 117 bringing the total size of mangroves in Makonzeni, Gazi and Chale to 615 acres. For the local population this means more income not only from a surging carbon credit sales, but also a multiplication of income generating activities. “We are getting more and more tourists, scientists, researchers visiting and this means big markets for our fish, handicraft, restaurant business and improved income for the population,” says Jesphat Mmtwan the project coordinator. The new community plan of action is not only limited to expansion. Efforts at protection have more than double. Every household in the community sends representatives to act as forest guards. “We are one family here and need to protect what we have toiled to put together,” said Mohamed Ardi, another fisher man and trader in Gazi bay. A tower of over 40 meters high has been constructed to permit community forest guards have an overview of the area against invaders while a 450 meters broad walk also set up not only to permit tourists and other visitors get a better appreciation of the rich mangrove forest but also to reinforce security, the project officials say. The expansion of Gazi bay mangrove has made the project the biggest in Africa according to UNEP programme management officer, Gabriel Grimsditch. On a global scale, the restoration expansion will serve as a push to ongoing drive towards including mangroves…

OPINION “The future of food – if the biosphere and her humanity are to be sustained – is local, organic, permaculture exchanged without intermediaries.” – Dr. Glen Barry The global environment is collapsing and dying. For too long we have lived our lives as if nature doesn’t matter and have failed to embrace an ecology ethic. We have treated water, air, land, and oceans as resources to be plundered and as waste dumps. Nothing grows forever – certainly not economies on the back of finite ecological systems – and mass psychosis pretending infinite growth is possible is a death wish.Such ecological imprudence is now catching up with us, threatening our very daily bread.Climate change is having profound impacts upon agricultural systems including a lack of regular seasonality. That is, the boundaries between cold and warm, and dry and wet, periods have become highly variable. In much of the world this makes it difficult to know when to grow your food. Knowing when to plant and when to harvest is becoming extremely problematic and this aseasonality is decreasing yields. This climate weirding is the direct result of our haphazard changing of atmospheric chemistry.Climate change is making it more difficult to grow food the way we have been. Huge swathes of farmland are faced by droughts and floods. Temperate region’s lack of cold weather and snow has meant an increase in agricultural pests. Similarly, factory animal agriculture and fisheries are being hammered from disease, parasites, and decreased feed stocks brought on by abrupt climate change.Shifting seasonality, and at times even a lack of seasonality, simply exacerbate problems associated with industrial farming. Modern agriculture consumes massive amounts of fossil fuels which cause both warming and are finite. Factory animal farming’s prodigious amounts of fecal waste become even more toxic in the heat. Increasingly toxic GMO Frankenseeds are being peddled in conjunction with a soup of dangerous chemicals as a means to keep production high.Our increased dependence upon limited genotypes mean that one crop or animal disease could swiftly kill vast amounts of agricultural products ushering in massive price increases and widespread hunger. Soils are eroding and becoming less fertile due to increased industrial intensification.Any increase in plant growth from increased temperatures and/or carbon dioxide is quickly eliminated as another limiting factor such as water and nutrient availability goes unmet. In many cases rising temperatures simply kill plants. And the food that is grown is often stressed and thus contains fewer nutrients. The end result of climate stressed industrial agriculture is low quality junk foods that are killing our bodies and our planet. Much of the over-developed world is addicted to the sugar and additives found in this industrially produced crap.As the global food supply becomes more precarious and subject to unexpected extreme weather events, the global population continues to soar, and has now reached approximately 7.5 billion people.Already nearly one billion people experience chronic hunger, sapping their soul and energy, and providing limited opportunity for a healthy and fulfilling life. Billions of emerging…

NYAKACH, Kenya (PAMACC News) - For 25 year old Jacinta Akoth Ocholla from a village in Nyakach sub-county, Kisumu County of South Western Kenya, the small kerosene tin lamp before her, is just, but a painful reminder of a dark past. What she wants to forget is the poor lighting she grew up in; cost and pollution.She used this lamp for her studies, and just last month, Solar Now BV, a clean energy company, installed a strip of solar panels and 7 lamps on the roof of their village house. And now the painful story of kerosene is almost a forgotten one. Solar Now operates renewable energy projects across East Africa with about 50 branch distribution networks in Uganda alone.And when she was asked to display kerosene tin lantern recently - for visitors who wanted to compare its light and that of the solar lamps in their house, - Akoth quickly lost the warm spark on her face. It was visible.This, equally affected her 70-year old mother, Regina Ocholla who was more than ready to demonstrate the good things about the one month they had used solar. She enjoyed a momentary happiness reading a verse from her old bible for the visitors. Both, mother and daughter, felt kerosene tin lantern was a reminder of a dark past.“For the time I have lived I didn't know that one day we will have light at night in this home. Today, for the last one month we have light in this house, day and night,” she said.Even though some of the homesteads in the area including the Ochollas, are connected to government Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) programme, this system has been seen as unreliable.“The new solar system, besides delivering clean lighting, is reliable and sufficient than the government line, which, out of the seven days of the week, lasts only three days forcing us to switch to the kerosene option,” Akoth added.Both of them however, shared positive messages about the solar system. About five people in that family charge their mobile telephones using the system. Now, it is even an income earner for the family. “We charge other peoples' phones here too but at Ksh10 per person. The money we get is used to buy some of the basic items like sugar,” she added.Mrs. Ocholla said, the solar lighting is a blessing to the family. Besides being in the process of addressing the health issues associated with the small kerosene tin lamp, the family has been able to avoid the paraffin costs.“We used roughly Ksh800 or even up to Ksh1000 every month for paraffin alone, but that's now history,” said Mrs. Ocholla. The family used to buy kerosene worthy Ksh20 every day to service four kerosene lamps, locally known as nyangile.Compared to the cost of paraffin for a year that goes to around Ksh12,000 a year and the cost of indoor pollution that comes with the toxic spewing lamp, with an initial deposit of Ksh42, 850 and monthly instalments of Ksh8,…

PAMACC NewsCoalition of women organisations attending the ongoing 3rd United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA-3) today urged the global assembly to prioritise the protection of women human rights and environmental defenders.The women groups under the umbrella of the Women’s Major Group (WMG) made the call at a side event on the challenges facing women’s environmental rights defenders.“Since the effects of pollution outlive all of us, we want a fast-response civil society advisory committee and the strengthening of UNEP’s safeguards and human rights policies if really we are to leave no one behind,” the women groups said.Identifying 2017 as the deadliest year for women’s environmental rights defenders, the women called for increased protection of their rights to indigenous land and resource ownership as they face increased crackdowns, violence, threats, intimidation and murder by state and non-state actors. The Women’s rights group also paid tributes to women who lost their lives this year while highlighting the important role of women rights defenders in creating a pollution-free future. Helen Hakena, Leitana Nehan Women’s Development Agency, Papua New Guinea said, “We have suffered a 20-year war, which has had a terrible impact on Women. “62% of the men confessed to having raped women. Even though the war has ended, women still face immense aggression from the conflict of resources on our land, where an international mining company operated the largest open pit mine in the world,” she said. “The Panguna mine has destroyed and polluted our land, forest, rivers and food sources, and seeps all profits away, Nehan added” Priscilla Achakpa of the Women’s Major Group revealed that about 200 women’s environmental rights defenders have been assassinated within the past 12 months, mostly killed over land and forest conflicts. “Only last week, we lost Elisa Badayos from the Philippines. But these conflicts are greatly aggravated by pollution,” Achakpa said “Pollution is not incidental but a deliberate and inevitable consequence of a profit-oriented economy of mass production of harmful plastics, pesticides, and fossil fuels,” Priscilla Achakpa added.Apart from this, the WMG chief said Nigerian women are exposed to hazardous chemicals every day. “Samples of human breast milk obtained from Nigeria were found to have high levels of Persistent Organic Pollutants. A study found over 15,000 metric tonnes of pesticides per year were imported into the country between 1983 -1990,” Achakpa said. In Kenya, some 5000 people are exposed to Mercury pollution in Artisanal Small-scale Gold Mining sites. “Mercury is banned under the Minamata Convention, negotiated here at UNEP but in the impoverished community that I’m working with they don’t have much option,” says Griffins Ochieng from the Centre for Environmental Justice and Development (CEJAD), a Kenya based NGO.“Mining gold and mixing it with mercury is the only knowledge they have and the main source of income. Communities do not have access to information about the hazards of using mercury. We need our government to stop mercury trade,” Ochieng added.