By Dr. Kariuki Muigua, PhD (Leading Environmental Law Scholar, Policy Advisor, Natural Resources Lawyer and Dispute Resolution Expert from Kenya), Winner of Kenya’s ADR Practitioner of the Year 2021, ADR Publisher of the Year 2021 and CIArb (Kenya) Lifetime Achievement Award 2021*
Climate change is one of the factors that affect agricultural production and, therefore, critical in understanding biodiversity mainstreaming and conservation in the agricultural sector. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Aichi Target 15 obligates States to ensure that “by 2020, ecosystem resilience and the contribution of biodiversity to carbon stocks has been enhanced, through conservation and restoration, including restoration of at least 15 per cent of degraded ecosystems, thereby contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation and to combating desertification”. Current reports also indicate that countries need to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels to achieve the 2 degrees Celsius (°C) target of the Paris Agreement and 55% to reach the 1.5°C target, and this can arguably be achieved through, inter alia, conserving, sustainably managing and restoring ecosystems as plants and soils in terrestrial ecosystems absorb an estimated 9.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every year. This is especially important considering that land-use change and poor management have depleted carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystems, resulting in large emissions of carbon into the atmosphere, with deforestation and forest degradation accounting for around 12% of global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2).
The Climate Change Act 2016 is to be applied for the development, management, implementation and regulation of mechanisms to enhance climate change resilience and low carbon development for the sustainable development of Kenya. The Act is to be applied in all sectors of the economy by the national and county governments to mainstream climate change responses into development planning, decision making and implementation; build resilience and enhance adaptive capacity to the impacts of climate change; formulate programmes and plans to enhance the resilience and adaptive capacity of human and ecological systems to the impacts of climate change; mainstream and reinforce climate change disaster risk reduction into strategies and actions of public and private entities; mainstream intergenerational and gender equity in all aspects of climate change responses and provide incentives and obligations for private sector contribution in achieving low carbon climate resilient development. It is hoped that the commitments made at the COP 26 will renew the hope for funding, especially with the Glasgow Climate Pact, which includes an unprecedented goal for developed countries to double the funding provided to developing countries for adaptation by 2025, taking the annual figure to around US $40 billion.
The National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands affirms that in Kenya, the ASALs occupy 89% of the country and are home to about 36% of the population, 70% of the national livestock herd and 90% of the wild game that supports the country’s tourism industry. The objectives of this policy are to: provide a framework for ASAL development coordination, resource mobilization, research, monitoring and evaluation; strengthen cohesion and integration of ASAL with the rest of the country and address inequality including gender, youth and vulnerable groups; improve the enabling environment for development in the ASALs by establishing the necessary foundations for development and bridge development gaps; develop alternative approaches to service delivery in Pastoral Areas; provide a policy framework for enhancing synergy on ending drought emergencies; promote sustainable utilization of existing land and land based resources to facilitate national economic development; and to provide an enabling environment for sustainable agriculture, livestock, trade and tourism development in the ASALs.
Arguably, climate change adaptation actions that do not consider the role of, and potential impacts on, biodiversity can have adverse effects – increasing rather than reducing climate change vulnerability.35 Thus, an effective climate change response requires consideration of the role of, and potential impacts on, biodiversity and ecosystem services, where biodiversity and ecosystem services support people to adapt to climate change through approaches collectively called ecosystem-based adaptation. Ecosystem-Based Adaptation (EBA) has been defined as the adaptation policies and measures that take into account the role of ecosystem services in reducing the vulnerability of society to climate change, in a multi-sectoral and multi-scale approach, where BA involves national and regional governments, local communities, private companies and NGOs in addressing the different pressures on ecosystem services, including land use change and climate change, and managing ecosystems to increase the resilience of people and economic sectors to climate change.
The ecosystem based approaches to adaptation harness the capacity of nature to buffer human communities against the adverse impacts of climate change through the sustainable delivery of ecosystems services. This is because, deployed with focus on specific ecosystem services with the potential to reduce climate change exposures, the forms used are targeted management, conservation and restoration activities. Ecosystems are important to not only important to sustenance of human life but they also deliver services that can help meet adaptation needs across multiple human development sectors including disaster risk reduction (through fold regulation and storm surge protection), food security (from fisheries to agro-forestry), sustainable water management and livelihood diversification (through increasing resource-used options) and can also generate significant multiple benefits such as carbon sequestration and other social, economic and cultural benefits.
In short, healthy ecosystems and their services provide opportunities for sustainable economic prosperity while providing defence against the negative effects of climate change. It has thus been posited that EBA integrates the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services into an overall strategy to help people adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and it includes the sustainable management, conservation and restoration of ecosystems to provide services that help people adapt to both current climate variability, and climate change, consequently contributing to reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience to both climate and non-climate risks and provides multiple benefits to society and the environment. Notably, COP 26 Glasgow Climate Pact recognized the critical role of “restoring nature and ecosystems in delivering benefits for climate adaptation”, which is basically ‘ecosystem-based adaptation’.
Due to the important connection between climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation, it has been observed that the multiple international agreements and national processes relevant to climate change and biodiversity should be implemented in ways that are coordinated, mutually supportive and enhance synergies. It follows that protecting, restoring, and managing key ecosystems helps biodiversity and people to adjust to changing climatic conditions. It has thus been argued that ‘ecosystem-based Adaptation can be embedded into national, regional and local policy and practice by adopting an integrated, participatory and ecosystem-based approach to territorial planning’. Policy makers must, however, be aware of the fact that ‘unlike some adaptation measures, while Ecosystem-based Adaptation can be readily implemented, adopting best practice approaches for the sustainable management of, for example, fisheries, forests, agricultural systems, river catchments, and coastlines, Ecosystem-based Adaptation initiatives still face a range of barriers, which can include a lack of finance, land use conflict and community opposition and knowledge gaps, where there is lack of information about the costs and benefits of EBA measures.
*This article is an extract from the Article “Promoting Sustainable Land Use Practices and Agricultural Resources Management for Biodiversity Conservation” by Dr. Kariuki Muigua, PhD, Kenya’s ADR Practitioner of the Year 2021 (Nairobi Legal Awards), ADR Publisher of the Year 2021 and ADR Lifetime Achievement Award 2021 (CIArb Kenya). Dr. Kariuki Muigua is a foremost Environmental Law and Natural Resources Lawyer and Scholar, Sustainable Development Advocate and Conflict Management Expert in Kenya. Dr. Kariuki Muigua is a Senior Lecturer of Environmental Law and Dispute resolution at the University of Nairobi School of Law and The Center for Advanced Studies in Environmental Law and Policy (CASELAP). He has published numerous books and articles on Environmental Law, Environmental Justice Conflict Management, Alternative Dispute Resolution and Sustainable Development. Dr. Muigua is also a Chartered Arbitrator, an Accredited Mediator, the Africa Trustee of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the Managing Partner of Kariuki Muigua & Co. Advocates. Dr. Muigua is recognized among the top 5 leading lawyers and dispute resolution experts in Kenya by the Chambers Global Guide 2022.
References
Muigua, K., “Promoting Sustainable Land Use Practices and Agricultural Resources Management for Biodiversity Conservation,” (KMCO, 2021) Available at: http://kmco.co.ke/wp-content/uploads/2021/ 11/Sustainable-Land-Use-and-Agricultural-Resources-Management-for-Biodiversity-Conservation-Kariuki-Muigua-November-2021.pdf (accessed on 05/04/2022).
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