#20 - Taking the right to clean water to Kenya's courts
By Mat Hope in UK & Maina Waruru in Kenya
Hello, and welcome to this latest edition of From a Climate Correspondent, a newsletter exploring the climate crisis around the globe.
Each week we share insights on the fight against climate change from our adoptive countries – this week from Nairobi, where Kenyans are taking their government to court over the right clean water.
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From a Climate Correspondent team - India, Jocelyn, Lou and Mat
The right to clean water in Kenya
No.20 by Mat Hope & Maina Waruru
Pastoralists of Marsabit, rural Kenya. Feb 2018. Image credit: Kandukuru Nagariun, via Flickr
“Go look at the toxic dumping up north”.
Whenever I mentioned I'm an environmental journalist on my formerly frequent visits to bars around Nairobi (in what now feels like a previous life), that is one of the first recommendations I would get. For decades, there have been stories of toxic waste being dumped in remote locations in the arid lands of northern Kenya. The water is dirty, residents get sick, people die and yet… there’s no recourse.
With such journeys into the field impossible right now, the stories of residents from Marsabit have fortunately come closer to Nairobi.
In an unprecedented case, they are suing the government to try and secure their constitutional right to a safe and healthy environment. My colleague Maina Waruru has been busy hearing their accounts, and how it came to this.
Toxic waste
As is often the case in Kenya, one of the most involved actors in the region has been the church.
Hilary Harkano, who until 2010 headed the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church’s Diocese of Marsabit has a very close relationship with the region’s communities. When he’s not helping to settle land disputes between regularly warring parties, he’s tried to help to get to the bottom of the region’s toxic water.
Studies commissioned by the Catholic church concluded the water in the area is poisoned with arsenic nitrates; dangerous chemicals believed to be the cause of the numerous cancer cases in Kargi, Dukana, Bubisa, Maikona, North Hall and Kalacha. Whitish salt or ash-like substances packed in bags has been found buried in the area. Historical toxic waste dumping has endangered the lives of more than 10,000 residents, Harkano claims.
A 2010 report by environmental NGO Greenpeace put the blame for the dumping on multinational oil companies trying to get rid of their drilling waste on the cheap. Their allegations are backed up by reports from Italian NGO Legambiente, which revealed vessels being sent to the region with the toxic waste in the 1990s. Local activists say they saw some of this waste cross into Kenya and be buried on-land. The companies have always been silent on the issue. The residents are adamant this is the cause of their ailments.
Andrew Arbelle, a 27 year-old man from Kargi, told Maina how he fled the plains for Nairobi after the death of his mother.
Namana Segelan Arbelle died at the age of 62 from cancer. She first knew something was wrong when she had trouble swallowing meat. She sought help at the local hospital, and was ultimately sent for care in Nairobi. She would finally succumb to the disease in May 2018, but not before the family had sold nearly all their cattle, their possessions, and held fundraisers for her treatment, Arbelle said. His aunt has now been admitted to hospital suffering from the same disease.
“Give our people water; water that is not salty and water that is safe,” he pleads. “Alternatively move all of us out of all our settlements and settle us far away from Chalbi to areas where living is less risky.”
Constitutional test
After years of frustration trying to get concessions from the oil companies, the residents have a new tactic — sue the government.
Kenya’s constitution gives all residents the right to a safe and healthy environment. This is not being provided in Marsabit, they argue. With the help of legal NGO Kituo Cha Sheria, they have petitioned Kenya’s High Court to force the government to intervene.
Greenpeace Africa’s Claire Nasike is confident the residents have a case. “This cleaning up has been done elsewhere and can be done here, after all this is the only place that these people call home.”
It is a test for many: the courts, to see how strongly they uphold this constitutional right; the government, to see if they will finally accept the need to intervene; and the residents, whose patience has been sorely tested for decades, to see if this last appeal to justice will finally deliver.
Must reads from the region
Feeding the world is killing the planet, Africa.com
Food production is fuelling climate change and decimating biodiversity, but a regenerative agroforestry nonprofit called Trees for the Future has a solution: a 'forest garden' approach that emphasises protecting the land and diversifying crops.
In the Lead: Climate Activist Vanessa Nakate, interviewed by the International Women's Forum
"We should not go back to how we used to live": Uganda's Vanessa Nakate, founder of the Rise Up Movement, on COVID-19's impact on activism and how climate change disproportionately affects African nations.
COVID-19 and the Environmental Crisis: towards a lower-carbon recovery, Ludmila Azo in African Arguments
Arguing that any environmental relief brought about by the pandemic won't last without structural change, this article gives a useful overview of some policy tools - from pricing carbon to promoting cultural shifts - that could see more lasting success.
Coronavirus crisis threatens to cut off clean electricity lifeline for poor, Eco Business
Investors in mini-grids and solar home systems -- essential to the 840 million people still living without electricity -- are shunning risk ahead of an expected recession that could put regular payments out of reach for many.
Residents sue Kenyan government over alleged oil company toxic waste dumping, Maina Waruru, DeSmog
And finally, you can read more by Maina Waruru on the above situation in Kenya in his full report on the DeSmog website.
What else I've been reading...
Isabel Hardman: politics, depression and the Natural Health Service, Alice Thomson, The Times
At a time when the workers in the National Health Service are on all so much on our minds, Isabel Hardman's idea of a 'Natural Health Service' is also striking a chord. This profile by a fellow wild-swimmer travels from Westminster to wetlands - and back.
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