When deeds speak, words are nothing

How to unlock opportunities
and lower emissions
While East Africa is a negligible contributor
to the globe’s total emissions
of climate gases, experts are asking
how it can mitigate its environmental
impact while also becoming more effective
at producing food and livelihoods
for its population.
Pius Sawa
Kakamega, Kenya
I
n Ahero, a wetland area near Lake Victoria’s
Kisumu city, Vincent Odhiambo, a rice grower,
floods the field by directing water channels into
different blocks after preparing the fields.
“I have been growing rice for more than
15 years. This is what I depend on for ensuring
that my family has food and money. I sell
most rice, and the rest is food for the family,”
says Odhiambo.
Odhiambo is, however, not aware that
his rice farming could be having any negative
impact on the climate. “I know that smoke
from cars, factories, and chemicals can damage
the air we breathe, but rice is good.”
He is one of more than a million farming
households depending directly on rice for food
and income security in East Africa. However,
a white paper prepared by the Environment De
fence Fund (EDF) shows that global rice production
releases significant amounts of greenhouse
gases into the atmosphere – as much as 1,200
average-sized coal power stations.
Flooding of rice fields isn’t necessary for
rice to grow but instead serves as an efficient
way of preventing the spread of invasive weeds.
The microbes that feed off the decaying matter
in these fields produce methane, which takes
up 12 percent of global annual gas emissions.
Methane is more than 25 times more potent
as a greenhouse gas than C02, although, in
the atmosphere, it reacts with other chemicals
in the air and breaks after just a few years.
Many other forms of farming also take their
toll on the climate. According to the United
Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation
“Ruminant
animals tend
to have greater
greenhouse
gas effects.”
(FAO), meat and dairy are major contributors,
accounting for around 14.5 percent of global
greenhouse gas emissions.
A report published by Carbon Brief quotes
Prof. Sir Charles Godfray, a population biologist
and head of the Oxford Martin School
at the University of Oxford, saying: “In a
very broad-brush approach, the products from
ruminant animals –sheep, cows and their
relative animals with four stomachs – tend
to have greater greenhouse gas effects. Part
of this is because digestion by ruminants
produces a lot of methane.”
The stomachs of ruminants contain specialised
bacteria capable of digesting tough and
fibrous material, like grass. The digestive
process causes the animals to emit methane.
A cattle farmer in Kenya.
Photo: The Niles / Pius Sawa
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