Climate change and the elderly persons
World Health Organization estimates that there are over 1 billion elderly persons in the world. In Kenya alone, there are 2.6 million elderly persons as noted in Kenya Population and Housing Census projection for the year 2020. The National Policy on Older Persons and Ageing 2014 reports that there are a lot of elderly persons in the rural areas as compared to urban areas. This demographic shift has been caused by rapid urbanization, shifting attitudes within communities and population movements. It has seen many young people move to urban areas in search of employment opportunities, leaving the elderly persons in rural areas, forcing them to practice agriculture to sustain themselves.
Through our community needs assessment conducted across Nyakach Constituency, Kisumu County, at least 400 households headed by vulnerable elderly persons practiced small scale farming which was not thriving due to extreme hot weather conditions in the area. These households have no reliable support to sustain their livelihood other than practice small scale farming.
With most of rural households depending on agriculture, climate change has had broader impacts on the agricultural sector as it has led to loss of rural livelihood income and food insecurity.
Climate change has proven uncertainty about long term availability of water in some regions to facilitate agriculture, leading to extremely low productivity.
The population at greater risks are vulnerable elderly persons with livelihoods exposed to small scale farming. Although article 69, section 1 (d) of the 2010 Kenyan constitution encourages public participation in the management, protection and conservation of the environment, these groups of households have very limited capacity to respond to environment conservation and climate change, because they lack proper awareness, or materials to combat the climate change.
Gender and social differences have also discriminated their access to adaptation options and information on environment and climate data. It is therefore evident that there is a wide effect of climate change on these vulnerable individuals. As these households depend on agriculture to improve their livelihood, they become vulnerable and unable to fend for themselves in terms of essential needs. This has led to malnutrition, poor health, low income and among other effects. Check out the problem tree
The challenge is intensified by agriculture’s vulnerability to climate change. The climate change has brought a lot of negative impacts and the results are already felt through weather variability and rising temperatures which has greatly reduced crop yields and nutritional quality.
Our Response
We seek to fight climate change as we improve livelihood among the vulnerable households headed by elderly persons. Our community development program introduces integrated approach to managing cropland and livestock. The interventions includes introduction of drought tolerance maize and other crops, soil management and crop rotation.
We focus on capacity building and training of farmers from these vulnerable households on climate change and ways they can practice agriculture in a condition that is environmentally friendly.
We seek to create agricultural training sites per ward where we build greenhouses and conduct agricultural trainings on the site. Our projection in the next 10 years is to train 4,500 farmers from the communities in Vihiga, Siaya, Kisumu, Homa-Bay and Migori, and 500 framers who will conduct trainings on the sites we will set in the 5 counties. We expect to have farmers from other regions to visit the sites, to expand sustainable agricultural knowledge in some areas other than the five counties.
The training sites will include trainings on setting up vertical gardens, climate change impacts on agriculture, food security and food systems and climate change adaptation as well as advocacy and water catchment ideas. We also teach them ways of diversifying crop rotations, improving soil quality and ways of integrating livestock with crop production.
The training site will be provided by the community, and will be managed by the community, who will charge non-target groups for the training services to generate finance for running the site when the organization withdraws its full support.
We also respond through enforcing environmental rights as per the article 70 of the Kenyan Constitution and ensure general community participation in curbing climate change. Through articles 59 and 69 we advocate for social differences that discriminates access to adaptation options and information on environment and climate data, ensuring sustainable exploitation, utilization, management and conservation of the environment and natural resources for the benefit of the elderly persons and the whole community. We ensure enforcement of the rights of elderlies in article 57 (a) and (d).
We shall engage the community and other stakeholders in advancing the above policies. Engaging with stakeholders like area chief, MCA, County government, private sectors, National Environmental Management Authority – NEMA, social protection, environmental and agricultural departments will easily and successfully aid us push for policies adaptation. We implement these policies from local level all the way to regional and national level as we scale up. This program is meant to build resilience in agricultural system through introduction of crops that are environmental tolerance in the areas hard hit by climate change
We have in place potential partnership with organizations, philanthropic individuals, private companies, and consultancy firms at our disposal to complement effective program implementation in our areas of activities.
The partners include Agricultural Experts, Data Analyst, Agronomists, Environmental Impact Assessment Experts, Communication Experts, Environmental Policy Analysis, Natural Resource Management Expert, Geospatial Engineer, Community Landscaper, and Water Expert whom we collaborate with to develop best practice for this program.
We ensure collective management of natural resources to improve land use and introduce long-term adaptation by changing systems of farming locally. Check the solution tree
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