KENYA 1C: Colonial Context

Environment   Sep 13, 2017 by Aisha Maalim

a)How does your footprint reflect the economy of your country, including its colonial relations?

Our Carbon footprint was higher than we expected considering the fact that we live in a less economically developed country. The average carbon emissions of Kenya which is 0.3 tonnes is very low when compared to more developed countries such as the USA which has carbon emissions of 16.4 tonnes; this is 54 times the amount of Kenya. The carbon footprint reflects the country’s economy as the higher the carbon footprint, the higher the country’s GDP and the fewer about of people in poverty for example when the global economy blew up in 2008-2009 there was a clear trend in the increase of carbon emissions. A country’s emission can be viewed as the product of its:

1.GDP

2.Total energy used per dollar of GDP per year.

3.The Carbon emissions per unit of energy used every year

We also realized the differences between people living in urbanized areas, who had more of an ecological footprint and those living in rural areas. It showed that the carbon footprint of someone living in poverty would be less as they have learnt to live with less. Not shocking that most of the urbanized areas were places colonialists settled. They built roads, railways and buildings in places of endless green kick-starting the process of development. However much we still may lag behind, there are places within our country that lag even further behind, something we learnt may be bad for our economy but not so much the environment.

b) How are the effects of climate change related with power imbalances among countries or within countries?

Higher ecological footprint seems to be a common trend among people who do live in cities and towns. This is more due to the fact that cities in our country have developed much faster and are more prone to overuse of resources and increase in production of waste. You would notice that most; of people leaving in these urban centers would only use public transport or cycling if they were forced to under circumstances like poverty. In Kenya the gap between the rich and poor is still large with the poor feeling a greater impact of climate change due to their vulnerable locations. Such as drought and famine, as well as water shortages which sets a back their livelihoods and even makes their everyday survival a challenging task. In the greater scope, developing countries seem to be affected by the new sustainable standards they now have to live up to, even though they may not have the money as well as resources therefore having to make a choice to either be environmentally friendly and cutting back on their reach to development or finding new creative ways to make up for this.

   By: Tina, Aisha & Yasmin.

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