THE KENYA CLIMATE FINANCE AT THE COUNTY LEVEL.
By Dolphine Magero
ACRONYMS
CCCF County Climate Change Fund
WAPC Ward Adaptation
Planning Committees
PFMA Public Finance
Management Act
CIDP County Integrated
Development Plan
GCF Green Climate
fund
ERPA Emissions Reduction
Purchase Agreement
Ci-Dev Carbon Initiative for
Development
IFAD International Fund
for Agricultural Development
SREP Scaling up Renewable Energy
Program in Low Income Countries
SCF Strategic Climate
Fund
CIF Climate Investment Fund
CSO Civil society
GEF Global Environmental Facility.
UNFCC United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change
UNCHE United Nations Conference on Human
Environment
UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment
and Development
POPs Persistent Organic Pollutants
CBD Convention on
Biological Diversity
SBSTTA Subsidiary Body on Scientific Technical and
Technological Advice
CHM Clearing House
Mechanism
UNEP United Nations Environmental Programme
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
ICRAF World Agroforestry Centre.
FAO Food and
Agricultural Organization
NEMA National
Environmental Management Act.
SBI Subsidiary Body
for Implementation.
CTS Committee on
Science and technology.
ABSTRACT.
The issue of climate change
has been referred to being the greatest threat to humanity. It has been of
major concern to the entire world and its effect has been felt significantly,
especially in the 21st century. This paper gives a brief history on
how the world came together to discuss matters of climate change and matters of
climate finance which is one of the key ways of mitigating the effects on
climate change. It seeks to discuss how funds for climate change mitigation are
mobilized and how they trickle down to the grass root level where the burden of
climate change is most felt. In addition, it highlights the entities that deal
with climate finance and how they help climate change mitigation at the county
level in Kenya through channeling of these funds. More so discusses the methods
of climate change mitigation that have been conducted down at the county level
which have borne fruit and have had significant impact on not only on the
climate-change-global-crisis but that have also had impact on the lives of the
affected communities.
1.
HISTORY
According
to Managing Land Degradation in Kenya by
Gideon H.N., It was not until 1972 at the Stockholm conference on Human
Environment ( UNCHE) that the global
community begun to take note of the changes that were occurring in the environment
due to the activities of mankind. Here
it was proposed that the world communities should set a date to meet and
discuss the way forward on the issue concerning the environment. This would be
done at the Agenda 21 world meeting which was a meeting to discuss how the
world would go about the issues that would affected the 21st
century. This meeting was held in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in 1992 and the
world would meet under the umbrella of United Nations Conference on Environment
and Development (UNCED) making 1992 to be the baseline year for all
environmental issues. This would be also called the Earth summit. This meeting
would be fruitful as it came up with; the Agenda 21 document, the Rio
principals on Environment and Development, A statement on forests and four
binding agreements. The fourth one which is most important in this context
entailed; a binding agreement on Biodiversity, a binding agreement on Climate
change and a binding agreement on Drought and desertification. They were
initially three but a fourth binding agreement came up much later which was a
binding agreement on Persistent Organic Pollutants(POPs) there four would then be
known as the Rio Conventions. Counties that had agreed to these documents would
be required to abide by these agreements failure to which there would be
consequences. For the implementation of these agreements 600billion USD would
be required of which 60% would be sourced from local resources of the involved
countries and the remaining 40% would be sourced from international donors.
This would mean that each country would set aside money from their national
budget to environmental issues which would be the baseline for the total
environmental funds. And the incremental costs would be met by international
standards. The sourcing of this 40% would create the need for a mobilizer or a
body to mobilize these funds thus giving birth to the Global Environmental
Facility (GEF) whose work would be to mobilize and distribute funds according
to decisions made at the UN level. Each of the agreements would have a 5-level
structured level of decision making body.
These
levels of decision making would be same for also the other three binding
agreement with the most critical level of decision making in this research
paper being the GEF. This level would have a secretariat who would implement
these decisions made via three implanting agencies therefore giving birth to
UNEP, UNDP and the World Bank. From these implementing agencies funds would be
channeled to the executing agents such as ICRAF and FAO. Though this money
could be channeled to the various institutions. There are three types of
funding levels which include the full scale project, the medium sized projects
and the small grants project. Small grants projects would amount up to USD
50000, the medium scale project would be between USD 50000 to USD 1M and the
full scale project would amount up to more than 1M. Full-scale and medium sized
projects would be handled by bodies such as NEMA and the small grants projects
would be handled by bodies like UNDP.
2.
INTRODUCTION.
The term climate
finance dates back to 1992 when the United Nations Framework Conventions on
Climate Change (UNFCC) agreed that developed countries shall provide “new and
additional” financial resources to developing countries. These finances would
be channeled through the Global Environmental Facility (GEF). The GEF was later
replaced by the Global Climate Fund (GCF) as the main channel for these
finances. Climate finance is therefore, financing channeled by national,
regional and international entities for climate change mitigation and
adaptation projects and programs according to Wikipedia. This definition is
coined as a result of the blame placed immensely on the developed countries for
their great impact on the climate change. This is due to the fact that they are
believed to have established the very first industries in the world therefore
initiating the pollution on the environment which eventually led to climate
change. They are also believed to own most of the industries that have impacted
the environment through greenhouse gas emissions in both their countries and
the developing countries. They are therefore to compensate these developing
countries through climate financing.
Climate finance in simpler terms refers to all financial flows relating
to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Therefore Kenya as a developing
country becomes of key interest as I strive to investigate how developing
nations handles the climate finance it receives both from outside and from
within. This paper dwells on climate finance in Kenya as a nation and how Kenya
manages the funds it receives of climate mitigation at the county level.
3.
ENTITIES DEALING WITH CLIMATE FINANCE IN KENYA.
Kenya as a country has
launched a 15member task force chaired by the Principal Secretary for
Environment and natural Resources Dr. Richard Lesiyampe under the ministry of
Environment and Natural resources that constitutes of individuals such as from
the Kenya Climate Change Working Group, Transparency International (K), the
Kenya Association of manufactures, and the University of Nairobi among others.
This team is to lead dialogues, advocate for climate change legislation and
advocate for low carbon for sustainable development in the country. The
devolution government has allowed Kenyan communities better access to climate
financing according to a blogger called Jane Kiiri. Makueni County became the
first county to enact the new climate financing legislation as farmers have
been able to learn about crops for climate adaptation planning. This County
Climate Change Fund (CCCF) has enabled counties such as Makueni to source out
climate finance from their own budget as well as from national and
international levels. Currently in Kenya, Isiolo, Wajir Garissa and Kitui are
the only four arid and semi-arid counties that are at the mature stages of
approving their CCCF legislation. The CCCF legislation will ensure counties set
aside part of their budget for adaptation finance and through the elected Ward
Adaptation Planning Committees (WAPCs) who will decide on how 70% of the money
raised, is to be used in the climate change adaptation. Through this channel,
the individual member of the society at the grassroots level, who experiences
the burden of climate change at first hand and who knows where the problems and
the solution lie, will have a say on how these funds will be utilized. In
Isiolo the funds has enabled the building of sand dams to trap the rain water
providing clean and reliable source of water during drought.
This fund in Isiolo has
also helped to strengthen the customary resource management institutions like
the “dedhas” among the Borana communities and has been used to renovate
veterinary laboratories that play a key role in diagnosing and treatment of
livestock as well as rehabilitating the fence water pans that are important
water sources for the wet seasons. The CCCF in the country works in accordance
with the country’s Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) that empowers the
county government’s financial body with permission from the county assembly to
establish a public fund that will be resourced from different sources. Climate
change adaptation projects are included in the County Integrated Development
Plan (CIDP) in order to enable funding from the county government. The CCCF
legislation also enables counties to become executing entities in the Green
Climate fund (GCF) which will considerable increase available resources to
finance investments in adaptation and resilient building in support of
community based adaptation. With the success of CCCF, Kenya has become a role
model for countries such as Mali and Senegal who are on the path to adopt the
same forum.
4.
LOW CARBON DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES AND THEIR IMPACTS.
Kenya as a county is
not only trying to combat the effects of climate change in the country but it
is also trying to reduce and if possible curb greenhouse gas emissions through
low carbon development initiatives. This is in line with the country’s vision 2030
project that seeks to reduce carbon emission by 2030. A good example of such
initiatives is the SimGas biogas system
under the GHG which signed its first Emissions Reduction Purchase Agreement
(ERPA) with the World Bank’s Carbon Initiative for development (Ci-Dev) which
entailed the purchase of 500,000 carbon credits that will hopefully improve the
affordability of rural households to invest in the biogas technology. This
biogas system integrates farm solutions for the rural households for instance, manure
from livestock is used as a raw product and the end products are organic slurry
and biogas. The biogas is used as a clean cooking fuel that in no way affects
the environment and the slurry is used as fertilizer for the crops as well as
fodder for animals. This acts as a form of recycling that will minimize wastage
as all end products are used up again and has no harm to the environment
considering also the fact that it is cheap and affordable to the poorest of
households. This reduces the loss of our carbon sink as there is no longer the
need for deforestation in order to get wood for fuel. The acquisition of the
GHG emissions reductions by the Ci-dev for households that purchase this biogas
system will be beneficial also as the standard warranty for biogas system of
three years will be extended to five years thereby increasing the consumers’
confidence and lower the thresholds for consumers to invest in the systems
technology. The Ci-Dev will contribute USD 125 million towards the SimGas
biogas system in order to implement innovative and transformative energy
business access models in low income countries such as Kenya.
Kenya has another
biogas technology called flexibiogas
that is suitable for small farmers with limited livestock and has garnered
support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). This
system entails a bio-digester device made of industrial sheets and pipes
estimated to cost about USD 500 with the benefit of generating gas almost
immediately. It requires 60kgs of manure to produce 1000litres of gas that is
the average amount of gas required for a household. This system caters the
small scale farmer as it provides fuel for the household and also manure to
cultivate a small piece of land. This system is not only limited to farmers
with cows but can also run on poop from chicken or anything bio-digestable like
garden weeds, kitchen and market wastes and water hyacinth. This
system is suitable for all types of farmers either in the lake regions or the
rest of the regions across the country.
5.
CONCLUSION.
The Kenyan government
does not work alone in this battle against climate change and climate financing
but receives support from other entities such as the Scaling up
Renewable Energy Program (SREP)
in Low Income Countries which is funded by the Strategic Climate Fund (SCF) and
the Climate Investment Fund (CIF) which pledge to give USD 318 million towards
climate mitigation. Other key stakeholder include the civil society (CSOs) who
have not been left behind in the climate finance arena. This particular
stakeholder has helped to set the investment approach and help to involve
communities in activities of climate mitigation and adaptation.
6.
REFERENCES.
1. Jane
kiiri blog on climate change.
6.
Biogas.co.ke
7.
Managing land degradation in Kenya by Gideon H.N Nyamasyo and Teressa N. Kyalo.
Good academic paper Dolphine. Keep up the good work. It was nice listening to the presentation during the writer`s workshop
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