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Water-stressed Kenyans learn to share to keep the peace
Posted by AlertNet: Kagondu Njagi on January 23rd, 2013
AlertNet: By the time the violence had died down, more than 80 people lay dead and hundreds were left homeless.
Yet there was scarcely enough water -- the resource the Maasai and Kikuyu tribes were fighting over -- to wash away the blood that had stained this part of Kenya's Rift Valley.
"The rivers were drying up,' shrugs Salau Ole Kilusu, a lanky and sunbeaten Maasai elder, recalling the conflict that erupted in 2005. "The Maasai needed the water for their livestock. The Kikuyus said they needed it...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Water-stressed Kenyans learn to share to keep the peaceRural Kenya tunes in community radio for weather alerts
Posted by AlertNet: Kagondu Njagi on November 1st, 2012
AlertNet: The tea and coffee bushes growing on the hillsides around Isaac Kinyua's home have long provided him and many of his kin with a livelihood, giving Central Kenya an economic edge over other parts of the country.
But the hillsides are also periodically hit by landslides -- one reason Kinyua is now taking the precaution of building a concrete wall on the eastern side of his house, where the land falls steeply to the valley below.
Why now? Because lately, when Kinyua tunes in his portable radio,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Rural Kenya tunes in community radio for weather alertsKenya’s farmers spot opportunities in warming climate
Posted by AlertNet: Kagondu Njagi on September 3rd, 2012
AlertNet: For farmer Eunice Wambui, the erratic weather patterns that increasingly disrupt the crop season in her village are a headache. But the same warmer temperatures plaguing Wambui have given Philomena Nyokabi the opportunity to try her hand at horticulture.
Both women are farmers in Kenya's Rift Valley region, but while climate shifts have favoured Nyokabi's newfound niche cultivating fruit and vegetables, Wambui struggles to produce a profitable harvest of corn.
At her farm in Rongai, a dry lowland...
Troubled northern Kenya seeks peace through conserving resources
Posted by AlertNet: Kagondu Njagi on August 1st, 2012
AlertNet: One of the most effective ways to deal with growing conflict in northern Kenya may be to address the environmental failings that help drive it, says a pastoralist development expert.
Conflict is nothing new in communities in northern Kenya, but the struggle to earn a livelihood in a difficult environment has become even more difficult as a result of poor land management and the effects of climate change, said Steven Ali, who heads the Pastoralist Community Development Organisation, a lobby group...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Troubled northern Kenya seeks peace through conserving resources