Science stands tall in the way of solving drought mitigation and water shortage

By: Sadiq Ibrahim

The basic foundation of science is management, management comes with a policy. It’s time to stop blaming the natural factor and down our tools to find a solution to our emerging water problems and drought.

Chiefly, optimum management of global water problem resources presents one of the most crucial challenges of 21^st century. The global population is increasing double digit and Kenya is not exceptional.

Kenyan’s urban areas will be more than double. Today in Nairobi water is critical short and many of the residents are impoverished. Over 7 million people don’t have access to safe and affordable drinking water and perhaps twice that many lack an adequate sanitation services, in fact, inadequate drinking water quality is leading cause to infant mortality in Kenya.

Food production is already limited and people are in dire need of solution. Western Kenya sugar industries are collapsing, Northern Kenya especially Turkana and Northeastern counties are facing both human and Animals hunger. The imported foods stuffs are beyond the ability of Kenyan shilling as it loses its value against the US Dollar every-day.

Agricultural water use is not sustainable in many parts across Kenya, for reasons that include soil Stalinization, ground water overdraft and over allocation of available surface water supplies. This situation raises many unanswered questions about whether there are sufficient water resources to support existing population.

In Kenya where science is only valid on exam papers and ends in classroom where the university innovations which could help never exist. There seems to be little doubt that science and technology must play a vital role in devising the solutions that will be necessary to overcome the daunting problems arising across this nation.

For Kenya and other African nations to overcome this water shortage problems which is causing a very devastating situation then we must focused on science based   solution.

And when we want to prospective science based solution then must avoid falling under purview of a single discipline but rather truly multidisciplinary and inherently interdisciplinary this embodies the fundamental physical and biological sciences as well as applications of those sciences and substantial contributions from the engineering sciences, hydrology, climatology, and geology.

A host of institutional, policy, and management issues must be addressed by fundamental and applied social sciences, which have been constantly ignored by our successive government in recent decades.

As a son who heals from Northeastern part of Kenya who encountered the effect of water scarcity and drought I must make an  understanding appeal that there is significant scientific information is already available, but much more will be needed in the near future through technological advances, improvements in climate modeling and forecasting, and developments in ecosystem and sustainability science.

New and innovative contributions will be needed from all of the social sciences. These contributions will be critical for understanding water-use behavior and for devising effective institutions to manage water in times of intensifying scarcity.

I appeal to a hope that for Kenyan and other African countries to overcome we have to put some measure to curb water sacristy, somewhere are here to be discussed and it’s as it follows

Science for Managing Water for Agricultural and Environmental Purposes. .

Agriculture is by far the largest consumer of water, accounting for 80% of water consumption in Kenya. It has been thoroughly documented that irrigated agriculture is far more productive than rain-fed agriculture.

Moreover, there is also evidence to show that the lack of water for agriculture is an important determinant of rural poverty and malnutrition. The clear solution to this dilemma lies with making irrigated agriculture a more efficient user of water.

There are many possible means for reducing agricultural water demand by increasing the economic productivity of water. Central to strategies for increasing productivity will be the pairing of the most appropriate and efficient crops with given sites and climates.

The motivation for improving the productivity of water in agricultural uses is partly to do a better job of managing scarcity and partly to ensure some (minimal) level of water for environmental uses.

Environmental uses of water provide environmental amenities and environmental services that include air and water purification, production of useful biomass, provision of domestic water supply, power production and transportation, and environmental stability.

These services are not always obvious because of problems in measuring them both directly and in terms of the value they provide. Methods do exist for evaluating overall ecosystem importance as a function of the extent to which there has been human interference with the ecosystem.

These methods permit the identification of optimum levels of human interference.

Advances in Technology.

One of the defining differences between the developed and developing countries in the world today is the provision of access to safe drinking water. Kenya as a developing country is not at its index globally. In Kenya we have alternative but to drink contaminated water. Those infected with waterborne disease and left untreated meet their death. Mandera County Cholera outbreak is my case study.

Wastewater treatment services and potable water supply in the Northern Counties are constrained both by inadequate infrastructure and the acute scarcity of water itself.

The most common infrastructure failure is inadequate pressurization to prevent contamination during transport and storage. If we don’t address this, the pastoralist community will be the most to suffer.

Significant investments in the creation of infrastructure may be economically infeasible for a country like Kenya whose economy has been paralyzed by theft and corruption and as well whose both foreign and domestic debt is rising to beyond limit.

In these circumstances, small-scale, decentralized technologies funded by the county government as stipulated in the Fourth Schedule of the constitution 2010 of Kenya must be putted on high focuses.

There are a number of so-called “soft path” technologies that focus on increasing the overall productivity of water at the basin level rather than on the development of new supplies. The general approach is to create community-managed, low-cost water supply and wastewater treatment technologies and small-scale technologies for irrigated agriculture.

Examples include manually operated treadle pumps and inexpensive diesel pumps, both of which are in growing use. Sanitation services can be provided through latrines or septic sewer systems as well as education on basic hygienic practices.

These local solutions can have a significant positive effect on the quantity of food that can be produced with a fixed volume of water. China, for example, has tripled its water-use efficiency while decreasing overall water use through a variety of both local and large-scale technologies.

Further science-based technology development will be essential to solving the world’s water problems. Improvements in rainwater harvesting and micro-irrigation technology are two examples.

The development of more salt-resistant and drought-resistant crops may be particularly important. There are a number of avenues through which wastewater reuse can be further developed, although ample attention must be paid to potential health risks.

Research focused on reducing conflicts between agricultural and environmental uses will also be important. One measure that could be particularly helpful entails the use of ecosystem services in agriculture.

Developing Management Institutions and Policies

The era in which most growing demands for water could be addressed by developing water supplies through large-scale infrastructure like dams in canals appears to be over or nearly over.

The main consequence of this change is that the greatest potential for improving global water security is through better management of water resources. Unfortunately Kenya doesn’t lack the policy but they happen to be busy bodies and toothless bulldog.

From Kenya water and Sewerage Company to NEMA and other environmental institution such as Ministry of Environment and Natural Resource happen to be consuming tax payer’s money. The mentioned bodies work is to create policies, advice the government and to bring the law offenders to the book. Offenders.

National Environment Management Authority failed Kenyan just at the begging and the worst part of it was when it didn’t advice the government on the northern collector tunnel which many of us believe it’s the reason behind the dry up of many rivers arcos this nation as drought momentum gear up .

For us to remains informative we need to learn about the role of human behavior in water use. Additional information is needed on issues such as determinants of levels of water use, the role of culture, different systems of incentives, effective organization of stakeholders, and stakeholder input.

Institutional research, as it relates to water resources, has unfortunately been negligible in the past decade or two at a time when new and innovative institutions will surely be part of the solution to the world’s emerging water problems.

Some of the social science disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, sociology, and geography that should be involved have not been systematically engaged or incorporated into interdisciplinary investigations.

Efforts will need to be made to encourage contributions from these disciplines both in the development of new institutions and to inform public water policy making.