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Kenya's economy is market-based with a few state-owned infrastructure enterprises and maintains a liberalised external trade system. The country is generally perceived as Eastern and central Africa's hub for Financial, Communication and Transportation services. Major industries include: agriculture, forestry and fishing, mining and minerals, industrial manufacturing, energy, tourism and financial services. As of 2015 estimates, Kenya had a GDP of $69.977 billion making it the 72nd largest economy in the world. Per capita GDP was estimated at $1,587. On the other hand, my nation's colonizer -Great Britain- thrives as owner of the fifth-largest economy in the world and nineteenth-largest measured by GDP per capita, comprising 3.7% of world GDP.
Kenya's average ecological footprint is 1.03 hectares per person whereas my group's average came to an alarming 4.4. It is safe to say that as an individual, "I'm living like a British resident in my own country." The U.K's average ecological footprint is 5.45 global hectares per capita. This would mean that I am swindling the economy that I personally contribute to and adding to its climate change issues, tremendously.
My eyes have fully been opened by this realization and I have come to notice a trend. Members of the higher classes (in terms of income and net worth) in today's society contribute the most towards strengthening climate change. This group of people have access to the most expensive yet the most carbon emitting devices, electronics, resources etc. However, it doesn't stop there, the effects of climate change have been observed to have more impacts on those who are poverty stricken than those of other classes. If that is the case – that is, if the calamity we face is global, affecting all of humanity and all other species – what does class have to do with it? We’re all in the same boat, aren’t we, on a rapidly rising ocean? Well, put simply, it has to do with who’s steering the boat we’re all in and who’s in line to be thrown overboard.
A class perspective highlights how the consequences of global warming, like everything else under capitalism, are unequally distributed, with poorer populations around the world hit first and hardest.According to Maplecroft’s 2014 Climate Change Vulnerability Index, the countries most likely to suffer the devastating effects of a overheating earth and rising seas by 2025 include Bangladesh, Guinea-Bassau, Sierra Leone, and Haiti — countries which have little or no responsibility for creating the crisis. Meanwhile, in the Amazon basin, rain forests are being razed and indigenous people removed to create the arable land to grow the soybeans to feed the cattle to produce the beef to satisfy the now-globalized appetite for hamburgers and thereby enrich the holding companies that own Burger King and other chains. But of course, the effects of climate crises also spread to the developed world and wealthier populations as seen through the recent hurricanes and floods in the USA.
At the end of the day, it is our mandate to fight the menace that is climate change, and it should all start with you.
