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As we seek justice, let’s restore ecosystems

Tuesday, June 8th, 2021 00:00 | By
A section of Naimene Enkiyo Forest overlooking beautiful hills. Photo/PD/Peter Leshan

Kenyans witnessed an intriguing week involving the Executive and the Judiciary as the country was also the focus of a major global environmental, development and human rights crisis.

While the spat between the two arms of the government stoked political embers, Kenya’s revered status as host of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) evoked global concerns.

Last Saturday June 5, was World Environment Day, the world’s largest platform of outreach on the environmental challenges of our time.

It also marked the launch of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration to address three planetary crises placing humanity in peril.

Climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution have brought us to the brink of a catastrophe.

As home of the UNEP headquarters, Kenya has a critical role in the frontline of ecosystem restoration efforts to reverse the damage we have caused to nature.

Granted, national cohesion and conflict resolution are paramount in forging unity and development, but such attempts must be conducted within the parameters of democracy, justice and respect of human rights.

Leadership needs to support policies and measures that stabilize the climate, protect nature and stem pollution, to create a world where the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of curbing extreme poverty can thrive.

As we dwell on the political and judicial solutions that citizens yearn for, we must also make peace with nature.

Restoring ecosystems provide a solution to the major environmental, economic, development, human rights and health challenges confronting the people.

Restoring ecosystems will slow and help communities adapt to climate change, bring back lost biodiversity, create productive land for agriculture, provide jobs, and restore nature’s buffer against zoonotic diseases and pandemics such as Covid-19.

UNDP administrator Achim Steiner, a former UNEP Executive Director, aptly describes it as a tiny virus that has humbled the human race and ignited a development emergency that continues today. 

For the first time in 30 years , global human development has declined, people everywhere are struggling to stop the spread of the virus, save lives and respond to the unprecedented socio-economic trauma it created in 2020, ‘the year of tragedy’.

Amid this ominous scenario, the climate crisis deepened, despite a temporary dip in carbon emissions as the world hit the pause button.

In the eye of this perfect storm, the Decade of Action for the SDGs began, and now the Decade of the Restoration of Ecosystems starts.

These two milestones embrace the whole world and all humanity, with even greater significance for developing countries such as Kenya.

They provide an opportunity for our leadership to present the best version of itself in the face of adversity.

True, ecosystem restoration alone will not solve all our problems, let alone the political, judicial and human rights ones, but it is imperative that we stop further destruction of the ecosystem.

We must reform agriculture, change how we build our cities, decarbonize our economies and move to circular economic models.

Human rights must be at the centre of the new biodiversity framework. A new study by the ICCA Consortium, an association of indigenous communities, shows that they actively conserve 21% of the world’s land surface, an area approximately the size of Africa.

The world’s largest biodiversity conference, COP 15, takes place in October amid fears of what scientists call the earth’s sixth mass extinction. 

World leaders should be wary when they sign a new agreement to replace the previous 10-year agreement considered a failure as none of the 20 Aichi targets were met. [email protected]

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