Climate
Change or global warming is something that has been caused by humans and it is
in our power to put it right. As a result, over a decade ago a large number of
countries across the world joined a treaty - the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Climate change in developing countries is
yet to be fully embraced yet they are the very countries yearning for
industrialization status without having
a proper framework for dealing with such an environmental issue
regardless of holding vast forestation cover which is now being affected by
pollution as a result of utilizing locomotives that are shipped from the developed countries whose
life span has expired hence cheaper but emits a lot of carbon which is a threat to the human and
environment at large hence the need for these least developed countries to
develop eco friendly laws that will protect the planet earth and its citizenry.
According
to E D S van Vliet and P L Kinney, Department of Environmental Health Sciences,
Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 60 Haven Avenue, B-1, New
York, NY 10032, USA, in their article Impacts of roadway emissions on urban
particulate matter concentrations in sub-Saharan Africa: new evidence from
Nairobi, Kenya, Published on 21 December 2007 they observe that the lack of
ambient monitoring data for particulate matter in SSA cities severely hinders
our ability to describe temporal and spatial patterns of concentrations, to
characterize exposure–response relationships for key health outcomes, to
estimate disease burdens, and to promote policy initiatives to address air
quality .For example, we are aware of no routine PM10 or PM 2.5 monitoring
anywhere in SSA other than South Africa prior to 2005. Starting in 2005, collaboration
between the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the United Nations
Environment Program (UNEP) has led to the development of air monitoring
networks in two SSA cities: Accra, Ghana and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Emerging
data from the new monitoring network in Accra suggest that annual average PM10
concentrations may typically be considerably higher than WHO targets and
guidelines, and that exposure and disease burdens may be especially great for
persons driving, working, or living near congested roadways (Nerquaye -Tetteh 2006).
In
his book Plan B, Lester Brown (2003) of the Earth Policy Institute offers a
comprehensive systematic summary of the range of policy areas that need to be
addressed in order to achieve sustainable strategies for economic development. He surveys crises in the areas of water and
cropland shortages, global warming, and the negative environmental consequences
of the growth of grinding poverty and he offers a menu of feasible policy
initiatives that have implications for action at the local, national, and global
levels. Public policy and public funds
need to support and coordinate investment in environmental assets that do not
lend themselves to profitable market investments. Voluntary initiatives such as the land trust
movement have demonstrated that private philanthropy can also play a major
role. Progress in the areas of
sustainable energy, agriculture, and forestry is demonstrating that coordinated
public, private, and philanthropic investment can create profitable market-based
productivity. “Externalities” the name economists give to those costs to the
environment, the community, and individuals that are inadvertently generated by
market activities and are not included in pricing. These include pollution and its consequences,
such as global warming and acid rain, and the depletion of natural resources
including water and soil as well as oil.
A comprehensive program of taxes and fees to recover the full costs of
externalities would be fair and conducive to sustainable business practices and
personal behavior. Henry George’s 19th
century proposal for land value taxation (the “single tax”) would promote
sustainable development and land use by taxing the value added to the land by
the collective productivity of society.
(Under George’s proposal, improvements would not be taxed as these
represent productive investments by individual landowners.).Therefore there is
need for the government to embrace green taxes/levies in order to deal with the
costs associated with such externalities arising out of motor vehicle
emissions. Besides capping the minimum age of eight years on vehicles being
imported and the zero rating of VAT on bicycles as way reducing pollution in
the name of un-roadworthy vehicles thus having an eco friendly mode of transport, the
subject of having a fraud cum an eco friendly free mode of transport has never
been fully addressed - though
considerable efforts are being made in having more commuter trains - the recent
commissioning of syokimau train though using older technologies is a case in
point. The world today is facing the emergence of a geopolitics of scarcity,
which is already highly visible in the efforts by BRIC developing economies to ensure their access to oil supplies this
already evident in war prone countries like Sudan and other oil producing and
emerging oil mining countries, The Brics (an acronym for Brazil Russia India
and China) are in constant competition with the so called G 8 Countries and not forgetting the Asian Tigers as they try to
have a fair share of last frontier on the global economy i.e. Africa whose
environmental policies are compromised by these established economies.“What
brings them together is that they are at the frontier of capitalism,” once reckoned
Christian Lohbauer, an international relations expert at the University of Sao
Paulo in an interview with BBC.
In the future, the issue
will be who gets access to not only Middle Eastern oil but also Brazilian
ethanol and North American grain. Pressures on land and water resources,
already excessive in most of the world, will intensify further as the demand
for bio fuels climbs. Locally sugar firms like Mumias have shown the intent to
diversify their risks from domestic production of sugar for basic and
industrial use to production of ethanol, Kisumu Molasses plant is also a keen
avenue to follow this coupled with growing presence and interest from the
Brazilian economy to invest in Kenya a fact that was marked by the recent visit
to Kenya by their head of state Luiz Da Silva’s on the 6th July 2010, By deepening
its ties with Brazil, Kenya is likely to benefit from bio-diesel technology
that is now becoming an option for energy-deficit economies around the world. Kenya
was expected to enter the ethanol fuel market in September 2010 following the
release of a formula that was to see petroleum blended with ethanol at the
ratio of 85:15. Mumias sugar, Kenya’s largest sugar miller is already lining up
for the bio-fuel business with the establishment of a plant to produce 25
million litres of ethanol per annum from 100,000 tonnes of molasses that will
earn it Sh1 billion in additional revenue annually.“Kenya has a lot of land to
support bio-fuels,” the Brazilian President reckoned during his tour of Kenya - Nairobi, Brazil is
a world leader in this field and Kenya stands to gain as we seek ways of
becoming more efficient in our management of the energy sector,” President
Kibaki said .Source: Business Daily
Magazine July 8 2010. Development projects recommended under Vision 2030 will increase demand on
Kenya’s energy supply. Currently, Kenya’s energy costs are higher than those of
her competitors. Kenya must, therefore, generate more energy at a lower cost
and increase efficiency in energy consumption. The Government should stay
committed to continued institutional reforms in the energy sector, including a
strong regulatory framework, encouraging more private generators of power, and
separating generation from distribution. New sources of energy will be found
through exploitation of geo thermal power, coal, renewable energy sources, and
connecting Kenya to energy-surplus countries in the region while at the same
time trigger the relevant stakeholders to devise policies that will combat the
effects of global warming as well as charging and introduction of green levies
to mitigate against any potential losses that may arise.
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