How should perennial water shortage in Northern Kenya be addressed?
Drought and consequently water shortages have been a perennial challenge in Northern Kenya.
This has been exacerbated by the historical economic marginalization of the region since independence. This has led to massive livestock losses and, consequently impacting on the region's livelihoods and in worse scenarios leading massive loss of lives.
To effectively manage the water crisis in Northern Kenya, it will have to take concerted efforts from both Government, Non Governmental Organizations, County Governments and Local leadership to come up with collective cost effective, and easy to manage solutions. For Instance, most of these areas are endowed with wind and solar energy on a larger scale. By such, effective tapping of these resources can be the solution to water shortage, through digging of Wind and/or Solar driven deep water wells which will in turn supply most of the affected communities with clean and affordable water for domestic and Commercial purposes.
This will in turn require deliberate redirecting of initial Financial investments by National and County governments into such projects.
The current policy and legislative frameworks on these areas have so far not yielded much returns as it focuses mainly on adaptation rather than building capacity and resilience to droughts and water shortages.
In conclusion, if well implemented, water availability in Northern Kenya will lead to increased livelihoods e.g. Agro-pastoralism, but, most importantly, it has a potential of changing the region's climate regime towards improved rainfall patterns and thus, limit the run away desertification.
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