Allan Ligare read Environmental Science at Makerere University, Uganda from 2005 to 2008. He is a trained Disaster manager and Conflict assessment and resolution expert. having undergone an intensive hands-on course at the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). He has undertaken tasks with great organizations in Humanitarian work, Banking and Oil and Gas industries. He has a passion for nature and the beautiful human modifications that make it better. He loves reading, writing and thinking; then writing some more.
Thank you to all who contributed to making this a success. The competition is now closed.
Africa Environment is offering Kenya Primary and Secondary school children and youth aged 6 to 19 years the opportunity to participate in a bi-monthly environmental education campaign focusing on sustainable development and environmental social responsibility entitled “My Future,My Environment”.
Participants are invited to submit their entries from the 1st to 30th of October 2011, and every second month throughout the running period of the campaign. Entries that reach us after the closing date will not be considered even in the next session of the educational campaign since the running question will be different.
Wouldn’t you want to be appreciated every time you learn or do something new on your own for the good of the environment? Well, Africa Environment, an umbrella name for Educative environmental initiatives has launched a campaign, My Future, My Environmentto reward children and youths as they discover more about their ecosystem.
The campaign, which will run once every two months starting 1st October 2011, aims at raising students’/pupils’ awareness of sustainable development and environmental conservation issues via self-study and practice. This we aspire to achieve through:
Disseminating information that promotes understanding environmental systems and environmental challenges.
Encouraging self-learning on environmental aspects through research amongst children and youth.
Influencing attitude change and promoting concern for the environment by means of incentives.
Impart skills to prevent and mitigate the environmental problems through encouraging participation in exercising acquired knowledge.
Pupils enrolled in Kenyan primary and secondary schools are qualified to enter the Educational contest in the three entry categories: Lower primary, upper primary and secondary/high school.
Submit a painting or picture showcasing an issue in regards to the environment together with its brief description of not more than 300 words.
Winning entries will be awarded USD10 and USD15 for primary and secondary school entrants respectively. Winners in each session of the campaign will be featured in our website and contacted via phone and letter.
Thank you to all who contributed to making this a success. The competition is now closed.
Our planet continues to suffer the effects of human activity, including land degradation, air pollution and contamination of waters. For the most part due to human activities, the waters have been turned into places of dumping toxins, and arid lands sites for testing and deserting warfare equipment. The wild animals have become a means of quick riches as they are killed for their valuable body parts. The polluted air that we breathe has become the cause of our premature slow deaths. The list is endless. The ability of our natural resources to replenish themselves is being strained by the consumption of the high and rapidly increasing human population.
Yet, mankind remain ignorant, even adamant because of the values we grew up with; values that are no longer sustainable if we are to continue existing in this planet as we know it.
That is why we need environmental education to be a basic subject, not to be taught just formally like mathematics and history, but to be a way of life for the young generation; the leaders of tomorrow.
Environmental Education, as defined in the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Tbilisi Declaration (1978) is a learning process that increases people’s knowledge and awareness about the environment and associated challenges, develops the necessary skills and expertise to address the challenges, and fosters attitudes, motivations, and commitments to make informed decisions and take responsible action.
With just as much right to live in comfort utilizing the resources that nature gives unto them, children and youth do not have the option of spending these resources as freely as their predecessors. Their knowledge, attitude and practices have to be focussed on sustainable development and social individual and shared responsibility for the general good of their natural capital. It is their only hope for a future as good as their present life, and can make it even better.
The focus of Africa Environment’s My Future, My Environment educational campaign is mainly on:
Disseminating information and imparting knowledge and understanding about the environmental systems and environmental challenges to children and youth.
Encouraging and promoting self-learning on environmental aspects through research amongst children and youth.
Influencing change of attitude and concern for the environment from a tender age so as to ultimately bring up an environmental conscious generation of mankind.
Imparting skills to mitigate the environmental problems through encouraging participation in exercising acquired knowledge.
The core intent of this educational campaign is to foster this necessary change in the lifestyles of the upcoming generation. Their future surely depends on their environment. Our approach is in full recognition that Education is not enough by itself but is a tool which has to be combined with skills and experience to cause any desired change. Change we shall bring.
Through their unconscious actions, Women conserve the most important resources needed for sustainable development – forests, energy and water.
In my words, without putting natural resources in the picture, to conserve is to use frugally and cautiously. I’m saying today that women are much better at “using frugally and cautiously” natural capital, as compared to their male counterparts. In this case, conservation is the “wise use of natural resources.”
We use various natural resources on a daily basis, starting from food to the air we breathe. However, I will use the other resources that we put to use on daily basis at our homes, and have much more control over their use; water, electric energy and wood fuel. I’ll let you think about any other.
On average, men use more water that women in every activity that they undertake involving use of this resource. For drinking purposes, men are advised to drink three litres of water a day compared to women’s 2.2 litres. Even a pregnant woman is supposed to take just 2.4 litres a day, until they bare the child when they can increase intake to 3 litres (For your information, too much water is bad for your health). Now, whether we follow this advice or not, the fact is that generally men take more water than women.
Secondly, while a woman can comfortably use five litres of water to bathe, that is enough for a man’s head only. On average, men use more than ten litres of water when bathing, irrespective of their body sizes.
Think about this as well; given that a man is in the right mood to assist in the kitchen, especially with washing utensils, how much water would he use to wash five plates and five glasses plus a few forks? My answer is, whether under running tap or not, a man in the right mood of doing this chore would use much more water than a woman would.
It is the difference in these amounts that I call conserved water.
I do not want to go to figure facts about how much hydro-electric power we produce in our country, and how little this is to sustain all national requirements. What you need to know however, is that the current population size of people connected to electricity is a meager 20 percent – just about 7.5million of the 38million Kenyans- albeit insufficiently.
With all the rationing, you’d expect the figure to be somewhere at 70 percent! Now, women have proved to be better users of electricity.
It is the simple things that matter most; switching off lights in unoccupied rooms, switching off unused power sockets and unplugging unused gadgets. A man will leave his radio or television on while going to the market thinking that they won’t take long, but a woman will switch off everything. While cooking or ironing, a woman will most likely be more cautious not to leave the flat iron heating or food to burn on the cooker. You know this is waste of energy. And don’t tell me about society-roles-advantage here.
Over 90 percent of Kenyan households use wood fuel for various purposes. This is directly proportional to the extent of forest destruction in the country. Still, women have shown to be more conservative of the forests. I will not tell you that they use less firewood in cooking than men, not at all. I am thinking of a scenario where two people, a man and a woman have a task of going onto the forest to look for firewood.
Most likely, the man will carry an axe, but the woman will carry a machete/panga. It most likely is due to their physical abilities that when you watch these two people coming back home, one will be carrying/pulling almost a whole tree where as the other will be carrying smaller tree branches. The one who cut off small branches is the better conservationist.
I know what the man is thinking now; that women don’t do these things while thinking of conservation. I did not say they do. But through their unconscious actions, they conserve the most important resources needed for sustainable development – forests, energy and water.
The conserved forests aid in rain formation. Rain brings water and the conserved forests act as water catchment areas. They become the sources of the streams and rivers that supply us with water for our daily use. When the water reaches our homes, the women use it much more frugally, and enable other people to get their share as well.
It is the same waters from the forested catchment areas that are used to produce electricity, and women use this electricity better than men. Once again, it doesn’t matter whether they switch off all unused electric gadgets and sockets because they fear electricity-related accidents. The fact is that they end up conserving natural resources, and the challenge to men is whether they can do better.
