Published on April 2nd, 2008
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so goes the old adage. But in Africa, green innovations by very creative and eco-imaginative minds seem to be turning this adage around, and perhaps we will soon hear of: “All work and play combined sustains a green Africa”.
It all started with the PlayPump, the water system that is a children’s merry-go-round attached to a water pump and storage tank that featured on Ecoworldly a while ago.
A see-saw that generates electricity when played on by children? Now there is this simple looking see-saw which when played on by children in Africa, generates electricity to help power up their school. It has no name yet but if this trend continues, it looks like Africa will be one very big playground for green play, literally.
You wanna play, somebody?
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Published on March 17th, 2008
If I were to lay my hands on $48.6 million, I would probably go bonkers trying to figure out what to do with it. But I am no Sir Paul McCartney, neither can I guess what Heather Mills does for a living. However, now that I know this figure separates the two on their divorce, I also know what $48.6 million can do for drought in Africa.
It is ironic if not a coincidence that on the same pay day in a London courtroom, the European Union was also announcing a grant of a similar sum to fight drought in Africa. The European Union package of Euro 30 million (US$47 million) will help African countries in the northeast of the continent fight the effects of drought.
Drought fighting initiatives in countries like Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya and even Sudan, always face funding shortfalls, affecting emergency relief for millions facing acute food shortages in the drought-hit Horn of Africa, in turn threatening to exacerbate already dire conditions. The effects of drought on people’s lives are devastating and not always visible to the rest of the world.
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Published on March 11th, 2008
And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. - Genesis 2:15
Jim Lackey is not amused that the media - new media bloggers included - keep churning out misleading headlines on what the good old Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti actually said about sinning environmentally.
If you’re wondering who the hell the Lackey fellow is, Jim Lackey is the general news editor of the Catholic News Service and he says there is nothing new about environmental blighting as a sin. He says editors are just having fun and are committing another sin in the process - adulteration of the original ingredient! But the CNS website itself has “NEW SINS” as the sub headline to the big story. Perhaps he means it’s an old sin with a new definition?
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Published on March 6th, 2008
There is no recent conflict in Africa that has elicited so much debate around the world and in the United States, in particular, as Darfur. Not even the post election political skirmishes in Kenya drew so much attention. Kenya, once the darling of the continent, the erstwhile adversaries are today sharing a cup of tea as well as power, something unthinkable only two months ago.
In a 2007 newspaper article, UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said: “Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand - an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic. Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change.”
What does this mean? The Darfur conflict inflicts even more damage on Sudan’s environmental degradation with nearly two million internally displaced people putting pressure on the fragile environment as they clear land and source ground water to survive.
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Published on March 1st, 2008
On this take-life-simple site that I like to visit, one blogger who goes by the name Brani put a petition asking people to promise that they were to shun going out shopping with new plastic bags each time they visited a supermarket.
The petition: “Promise to reuse bag” read: “I will re-use plastic supermarket bags or get a pretty plastic/cotton bag that I can carry everywhere in case I need it but I want 10 other people to do the same.” It attracted 11 more people who made a similar commitment.
Writing from somewhere in the UK, Brani was inspired by documentaries on sea life being swamped with plastic rubbish. That supermarkets are one of the largest contributors to the plastics menace goes without doubt.
In countries with little or no legislation, non biodegradable plastics are choking life out of flora and fauna in urban areas and slum communities are bearing the biggest brunt. In South Africa, plastic bags have been dubbed the “national flower” because so many can be seen flapping from fences and caught in bushes.
A visit to the one-million population Kibera, arguably Africa’s largest, or Mathare Valley across the city of Nairobi, once touted as the “Green City in the Sun”, is an eye-opener to the effect of plastics to the environment.
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Published on February 25th, 2008
Chances are the next time you are served tea with sugar, it probably may interest you to know that both commodities passed through green and sustainable processes to reach your breakfast table.
And what’s more - small holder farmers in east Africa who worked hard to put a more environmentally friendly cup of tea in front of you not only reaped a bumper harvest from their labor, they also got to sell excess electricity generated to local grid operators.
The green funding mechanism, Global Environment Facility or GEF and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) are collaborating to implement small-scale hydropower projects and cogeneration power projects in several East African states in two initiatives.
The projects are meant to reduce the tea industry’s energy costs, enhance global competitiveness of the region’s tea industry. It hopes to increase the share of global tea revenues, flowing to the region’s tea farming community as well as provide opportunities for extending clean electricity to rural communities.
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Published on February 25th, 2008
Dear Readers,
Our goal this week was to help , bring you eye to eye with people of many nationalities to explore what environmental issues motivate each of us to care and inspire us to take action.
In case you missed it or are coming back for more, here’s our week in review:
Sam Aola Ooko offered a Kenyan perspective from the streets of Nairobi.
Pem Charnley reflected on the rise of the Industrial Revolution in the UK and its implications for the world and environment.
Mark Seall went to the Swiss Alps, wondering why the idea of personal responsibility for the environment is lacking, then to the streets of Switzerland for a taste of some real attitude.
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Published on February 24th, 2008
My grandmother could never have made this connection in a million lifetimes. But she would have cursed me for suggesting that the menacing elephants that occasionally come to our dusty village somewhere in remote Africa to pillage on our crops and the geckos that roam the village paths could have a connection with her lying on her death bed and needing the knife of a surgeon for her perennial ulcers.
But two separate scientific studies and discoveries in very different settings in Africa and the US can easily make the connection, if you may.
Connecting the Elephant and the Gecko
The pounding feet of the 15,000 pound African Bush Elephant make protective crevices in the savanna grasslands that help the geckos hide from their predators and the hot, penetrating African sun, according to Robert Pringle, an ecologist and conservation biologist at Stanford University in California, who conducted his research at the Mpala Research Center in Kenya. Significant numbers of geckos have been reported in the aftermath of an elephant’s feeding - the vertebrates often finding breeding space and security in fallen tree limbs and stripped barks. This makes the Elephant a change agent of habitat creation at the patch scale for small species that seem insignificant.
Connecting You and the Gecko
The gecko is a small to average sized lizard belonging to the family Gekkonidae that come in 1,196 different species and which are found in warm climates throughout the world.
Many species have specialized toe pads that enable them to climb smooth vertical surfaces and even cross indoor ceilings with ease. Some species like the house lizard are entirely harmless and feed on irritant house insects, which is good. But that is not all.
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Published on February 22nd, 2008
In Mombasa, Kenya, there is a popular saying that if you have not sampled shark meat, you probably have never been to the East African coast. But it could well be a belief because I have seen people go to great lengths to afford a dish; it is a very expensive delicacy. But that is a story for another day. Let us focus on the whale shark, which is making all the news in that part of the world.
An ongoing satellite tagging expedition to the ecosystem of the world’s biggest fish is a mix of both adventure and science. I rue missing this whale shark census expedition, running from February 18 to March 2, conducted in a safari setting!
Dr. Brent Stewart, a marine biologist at the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute in San Diego, California, is conducting the expedition with local collaboration from the East African Whale Shark Trust (EAWST) to study the ecology of whale sharks along the Kenyan coast. Local experts, Volker Bassen and Nimu Njonjo, have ensured public participation in the annual project at a small fee; this adds to the adventure in research and education and a huge exciting step for Kenya’s marine ecology conservation efforts.
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Published on February 20th, 2008
I tried crossing through the Uhuru Park this morning from Nairobi central business district on my way to Community Hill but paramilitary police, better known as GSU or the General Service Unit, barred my way. One officer, armed to the teeth and sporting a bulldog frown, cocked his AK gun, looked at me with scorn and asked who I thought I was. I mumbled a quick “sorry” and went back to walk along Valley Road. I was just testing the waters with my act and I realized they meant business.
But in 1989, one brave woman who we now know as Wangari Maathai, dared the then Daniel arap Moi government at the same park and took a heavy beating, spending time in hospital. Then and now, Uhuru Park, has been the darling of environmentalists and politicians in Nairobi alike. For politicians, it is where declarations on Grand Marches to Freedom have been made to the people; for environmentalists, Nairobi’s only serene recreational public park with an artificial pond, is too valuable for just being a talkshop. It is where Freedom for the Planet, ala Wangari Maathai, began. She almost single handedly stopped the Moi regime from putting up a 60 story business complex as a gift to the ruling KANU party and the world noticed her work that started in 1977 with the formation of the Green Belt Movement, a grassroots environmental non profit.
The Face of Environmentalism in Africa
Maathai is the face of environmentalism in Africa. No other African environmental activist has won as many accolades, including the Goldman Environmental Prize, as she has and when she in 2004 bagged the Nobel Peace Prize for her lifetime struggles and achievements for a greener Africa and the world her countrymen and women thought one of their own had finally been recognized by the global community. Shalini Ramanathan, a clean energy advocate, writing in Grist calls her “outspoken, accomplished and passionate” about the environment and what she stands for. The British Broadcasting Corporation has called her a leading campaigner on social matters.
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