It is now no longer in doubt that we are liv­ing through one of the worst droughts in our country’s his­to­ry. Find­ing a last­ing solu­tion to this cri­sis will require respon­si­bil­i­ty at three lev­els name­ly indi­vid­ual, cor­po­rate and inter­na­tion­al levels.

First­ly, our con­sti­tu­tion enshrines per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty when it grants sov­er­eign pow­er to ‘we the peo­ple.’ Every sin­gle Kenyan is cap­tured in these three words. As such, we should take our indi­vid­ual respon­si­bil­i­ty to effect last­ing envi­ron­men­tal, eco­nom­ic and social change.

On the envi­ron­men­tal front, I sug­gest that we take per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty to plant and nur­ture the 15 bil­lion trees that our Pres­i­dent has called out for. We can do this by embrac­ing the ‘Plant your Age’ cam­paign or any oth­er. I urge all of us to cel­e­brate our birth­days by grow­ing trees com­men­su­rate with our ages. Don’t wait for any­one to buy those tree seedlings for you. Invest finan­cial­ly and emo­tion­al­ly in that ini­tia­tive. At our house­hold lev­els, every day is a tree grow­ing day because as you drink your water and take a show­er you can hap­pi­ly share the water with a that is pro­vid­ing oxy­gen next to you. Fur­ther­more, respon­si­bil­i­ty goes far beyond tree grow­ing so, iden­ti­fy the voids and take up your space.

Sec­ond­ly, time is ripe for us to focus on cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ty. This means a nation­al col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty where the Gov­ern­ments, cor­po­ra­tions, faith-based insti­tu­tions and all our com­mu­nal fac­ul­ties and group­ings are com­mit­ted to tak­ing cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ty and not just the often-mar­gin­al pub­lic rela­tions exer­cis­es. A com­mon and pas­sion­ate respon­si­bil­i­ty of replen­ish­ing both the envi­ron­ment and sus­tain­able livelihoods.

For instance, the con­struc­tion sec­tor extracts mas­sive amounts of sand and water from the envi­ron­ment and in so doing exac­er­bates water scarci­ty and land degra­da­tion. Cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ty will oblig­ate all major con­struc­tion firms to ensure total riv­er ecosys­tem restora­tion in the Low­er East­er regions. How can we pos­si­bly have such mas­sive invest­ments in sky scrap­pers and multi­bil­lion estates where investors wreck home loads of mon­ey when the com­mu­ni­ties where they har­vest­ed sand from is cur­rent­ly lan­guish­ing in drought? Shouldn’t there be a pas­sion­ate oblig­a­tion towards replen­ish­ment because uncon­trolled sand har­vest­ing depletes ground­wa­ter considerably.

Before declar­ing prof­its, cap­tains from the lucra­tive con­struc­tion indus­try which thank­ful­ly con­tributes 5.5 % to Kenya’s GDP, can we con­sid­er cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ty as pre­sent­ed here by fund­ing con­struc­tion of mil­lions of the eas­i­ly achiev­able sand dams across the affect­ed  regions?

Can you imag­ine the num­ber of roads that Kenya has con­struct­ed in the last ten years? Where did the con­trac­tors vig­or­ous­ly har­vest the bal­last and water from? Is it not from com­mu­ni­ties who are now suf­fer­ing drought and unmatched pain? Did the con­trac­tors pas­sion­ate­ly plough back the worth to replen­ish the envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion and the liveli­hoods of our people?

Hasn’t the min­ing and tourism sec­tors report­ed mind bog­gling prof­its in their books? Can the Tai­ta and Maa com­mu­ni­ties relate to such returns? I there­fore see a need for our hon­or­able hous­es of Par­lia­ment to enact laws that will make it oblig­a­tory for cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ty towards replen­ish­ment of nat­ur­al cap­i­tal for com­mon good.

Final­ly, the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty must also take respon­si­bil­i­ty and pay for its ongo­ing emis­sion of green­house gas­es. In Europe, the build­ings sec­tor con­sumes 40 per­cent of Europe’s ener­gy. A sub­stan­tial part of this ener­gy emits harm­ful green­house gases.

Indeed, play­ers must fast track the imple­men­ta­tion of The Loss and Dam­age Fund agreed at COP27 which aims at pro­vid­ing finan­cial assis­tance to nations like Kenya, which are most vul­ner­a­ble to cli­mate change impacts. I dare sug­gest that African coun­tries should recon­sid­er diplo­mat­ic rela­tions with devel­oped coun­tries that will not pay up their share of this loss and dam­age fund with­in the stip­u­lat­ed timeframe.

Unless we take respon­si­bil­i­ty at the three sug­gest­ed lev­els and choose to be account­able, we shall be found fin­ger point­ing in the mist of the rav­aging drought. Think green act green.