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Climate. This word has struck few as prolonged conditions of weather. Others will be thinking of variation in temperature ,humidity, atmospheric pressure, or wind but many will be afraid to imagine climate as a good 'thing'.
The idea of typhoon ,floods, droughts, earthquake and changes, hurricanes or volcanoes is good enough to make others cringe in fear. tornadoes, solar flares, pandemics, tsunamis and other climate related disasters have affected many and in my community, we've not been spared.
Being a member of a society in Malindi town in southeastern Kenya, I can attest to the fact that mother nature has a dossier to fix us. We are surrounded by tropical beaches,awesome marine parks and forest reserves but the weather is kind of 'okay' for others. With a temperature of 27°C and wind travelling at 13km/h and humidity of 81% climate affects my community in various ways.

Around the world ,I've always heard that winters are Rainier than the winters but according to Koppen and Gerger, Malindi has a climate classified as Aw, meaning the summers are rainier than winters. we have an average rainfall of 1094mm annually.
It gets so dry especially in the month of February, with only 6mm of rain, while the month with greatest precipitation is May, of about 300mm.

The presence of sea, makes things go awkward, the rain are abundant from April to June (the peak is May). Climate during the rainy season, the rains can be terrestrial. Many would think that my community prides itself in the heat and the ocean breeze, but when it rains, it causes damages like flooding and power outages.

Mother nature is unpredictable, there is no common denominator on what to expect but the bedrock truth is from July to September it vets too dry but there comes the south east trade winds from Indian ocean that creates thunderstorms, the reason is the winds from the sea collects heat and humidity when the sea is warmer.
Sitting near the equator, Malindi is sheltered from tropical cyclones. Economically, climate have smiled towards Malindi as we mostly rely on tourism, the best time visitors come to our town is August and September. This period temperature is pleasant even though the breeze can make the sea rough.
During the months of December to March, it's sunny, the heat is felt and the sea is calmer.


Deathly disasters
We have been accustomed to this 'normal' range of conditions and we are prone to break down when extremes fallout of this range. Climate change have affected our health. Floods have been a major cause of water borne diseases like malaria and Dengue fever, resulting to vomiting ,diarrhea, dehydration or even death.
During the rainy seasons, thousands of people are displaced by the floods when rivers suddenly swell. Several houses get submerged as heavy rains continue pounding the villages. Extreme heat is also an agent of illnesses especially skin related.

Doomed infrastructure
The flood waters then flows down streams to cause havoc in the lower
villages downstream. Hundreds of latrines have been swept by the floods causing more diseases to take victims. Bridges have been covered and swept by water leaving residents stranded, roads are not passable and transport systems gets affected.

Power outage
Energy faces a blow, electricity faults and power outages becomes the norm of the day, power poles gets carried off, power lines break risking lives of many due to electrocution .Industries closes, no jobs for people and that's when poverty knocks in giving way to crime.
Climate change impacts people who live in areas that are vulnerable to drought, sea level rise and coastal storms.

Economic disarray
As we rely mostly on outdoor tourism, once sea-level rises and we experience coastal storms or heat waves, the tourism sector becomes a suffocating agony. A warming climate and changes in precipitation pattern decreases the number of days people engage in recreational activities. After coastal storms beaches suffer erosion and pollution.

Overstretched resources
Along the coast both the increasing population and changes in climate raises a great demand on infrastructure, water, food, transportation and other resources.
Most people in my community are below the wealthy class, so they have difficulties in coping with changes, they lack the resources to combat the heat, to evacuate or relocate.
When catastrophic event due to climate change takes place, the resources gets depleted faster.

Scarcity of food and water
When the floods,droughts, heat wave or storm comes, food become an issue of concern, safe food and clean water becomes scarce and this raised the mortality rate.
Change in migration of fish due to storm surge and rising of sea level would make the fishermen feel the pain and they will probably loose their livelihood

Farming impossibilities
Due to climate change, my community have been forced to forget about farming, the climatic cycle around the year have threatened plants and animal lives. The heat is unbearable and the soil is salty. The onslaught of the physical climate and area maladies have reduced our rate of productivity, we tend to do little farming because climate have favoured us with pain.
High temperatures and low soil moisture have a negative effect on agriculture.

Government, parties concerned and everyone else can come up with solutions to curb the wrath of nature.

Healthy solutions
During times of floods lots of people can experience post traumatic stress disorder, first there must be additional community support for flood prevention
To decrease waterborne illnesses, there must be a link of water quality and quantity.
Education and awareness for the population at risk should be provided on what to do when things go wrong
Medical assistance should be readily available before and after the catastrophe. Medical resources and practitioners in a given area like Malindi should take into account the probable means of controlling an epidermic.

Saving infrastructure
I believe the local government or bodies concerned should build roads, and bridges en masse going in and out of a catastrophe prone area.
Roads should be passable even during changes in climate, this would be very helpful during transportation of food, medicines and other supplies.
People need to encourage conservation and retain more water
Sewerage systems needs to be upgraded to avoid spread of diseases when floods take over
Building roads and bridges should have more insulation and weather proofing.
The government should provide better transportation choices for people in the rural in case of extreme climatic conditions.

Education and informative sessions
The mass should be educated about climate changes because many can be confident in facing climate challenge once they know what they are up against.
I believe my community at present time should be familiar with climate policy.
As residents of Malindi we could plan climate friendly meetings and forums and develop a climate change programmes.

Government aid
The government and other bodies concerned should increase energy efficiency and help in reducing habits that might be degrading the environment and also reduce waste that might be causing illnesses.
We should also develop local capacity to provide for ourselves without relying from well wishers when climatic disaster strike.
We also need to preserve natural habitats and maintain the 'green' e.g we shouldn't cut down trees ,or cause erosion.

Power outage solved
In my community, we need to have an alternate source of energy like biomass, geothermal,wind energy and passive solar, these would be a back up power if electricity has been affected by disasters caused by climate e.g floods or tsunami.

Economic comfort
Depending on one source of income as a community isn't the best thing to do, if we could improve employee morale and loyalty we would have more people looking for jobs. If many people are employed, a disaster can be combatted easily.
We could enhance brand images and reduce liability and risk, we could do these by coming up with climate friendly technologies.

Safe food and clean water
To avoid scarcity of water we need to retain, protect and preserve water and make it easily accessible when needed. We could reduce the use of water unnecessarily.
Food should be in bulk because no one knows when disaster will come calling, when the rainy or dry season approaches, we could have food reserves to help out during the period of climate change.

Farming with joy
We should maintain and promote sustainable soil management practices
We could also have access to agricultural education institutions where we would learn what type of crops and livestock we could keep in our climatic conditions and the benefits it would have for us as a community.
The government could provide us with access to irrigation and other equipment associated to that to curb the drought menace.
We could, with the help of our local government, invest in forms of machinery to adjust production and raise our yields

As much as climate change might be hard to control, we can try all we could to survive and make the change work for us.

07-01-2018 13:34
Tim the plumber
Do you use swales?

There are lots of ways in which good land management can make deserts productive. Your rainfall figures seem very high. This would make the place extremely productive.
07-01-2018 20:22
Tim the plumber wrote:
Do you use swales?


All of the successful cultures of the world have used contour farming techniques to arrive at good farming practices. In Southeast Asia they have too much rain and use contour techniques to excess water away from their crops and retain their arable land. In the mid-west US they use contour techniques to save the smaller amounts of water and channel it into the water tables keeping the land damp enough to avoid the mistakes of the Dust Bowl years.

These techniques are very flexible and strangely enough they are almost identical with only small changes.

What our friend simonkibz has been fearing isn't climate change but he is simply becoming educated in how small changes in weather from year to year can have very large effects if there are not standard practices in place to stop harm from occurring due to the chaotic weather patterns.
17-01-2018 22:42
"old sick silly sleepy sleezy slimy slimebarf filthy vile reprobate rooting (& rotting) racist pukey proud pig AGW denier liar whiner & many time (plus 1) threatener wake-me-up" wiffed:....standard practices in place to stop harm...
The standard practices of "don'T rump" are harming our National Parks, Monuments, EPA protections, waterways, landscapes, our breathing, & economic safeguards, leading to environmental declines & a second economic collapse of this still beginning century.


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