Introduction
Environmental deterioration is the degradation of the environment by exhausting the available resources like soil, air and water; the damage of ecosystem and the extermination of wildlife. The drastic increase of the environmental pollution cause harms to the natural world and also accelerates the corrosion and degradation of the matters utilized in technical work and artistic or historical value. Rapid population growth is perceived as one of the most oppressive world-wide challenge that contributes to deterioration of the environment. Though population growth is closely related to environmental deterioration, the relationship between population increase and the quality of the environment is composite. The type and quantity of pollutants emitted are not only dependent of the total number of individuals residing in the world but it is also determined on the technologies generation and pattern of consumption. Therefore, an increasing population does not basically contribute to the rising degradation of the quality of the environment (Jost, Quaas & Schiller 4). This paper will examine the environmental deterioration in Kenya in relation to the poverty level.
Environmental deterioration in Africa
Approximately half of the land that is cultivated in Africa is semiarid and arid comprising mainly of desert soils (entisols and aridsols) that contain less organic matter components. Thus, most of the Africa’s land is deteriorated. Almost 30 percent and 65 percent of the pastureland and cropland respectively in Africa is faced by deterioration or degradation with consequential decrease in crop production and constant food insecurity. In addition, 14 percent of the deteriorated soil is as result of the removal of vegetation, 49 percent resulting from overgrazing, 13 percent as a result of overexploitation and 24 percent as a result of agricultural activities (World Research Institute 54).
All over Africa, reducing or abbreviating poverty level of the poor individuals has been the most priority of most of these countries. Poverty is the great cause and consequence or effect of the degradation of the environment and depletion of the resources that pose threats to the present and future growth of the economy. Improving the living conditions, health and income of the poor individuals persists to be the top policy and political essential if African countries will make progress towards the development that is socially, environmentally and economically sustainable. African continent is rich with natural or environmental resources; forest, rich biological diversity, minerals and wildlife. However, this wealth is greatly unexploited and underutilized and is not mirrored in the wellbeing of the people living in this continent due to multifaceted socio-economic reasons (Mbuya 2).
Africa for many decades has been the continent that has the greatest or highest population growth rate in the globe. In addition, the region is also the poorest and many of the individuals, particularly those living in the rural areas are very poor. Recent studies indicated that approximately 60 percent of the individuals living in the rural areas survive below the standard poverty line of one $US per individual daily. Moreover, poverty in the urban areas is also widespread, with about 43 percent of the people surviving on less than two US dollar for an individual in a day. Therefore, in total there are approximately 300 million individuals surviving below the line of poverty in the sub-Sahara Africa (Economic Commission for Africa 9).
Most of the individuals in these countries rely on the natural or environmental resources for their survivals or livelihoods. They are involved in agriculture; however, since the population is growing rapidly, the farming land is becoming sparse. In the year 1961, the average farming land per capita in Africa was 0.6 hectares per individual. By the year 1993 the size of the arable land dropped to 0.27 hectares per individual. On the other hand, poverty has contributed to most of the people being unable to perform or carry out intensive agriculture, which needs important contributions and resources investments in the farm level and land developments. Therefore, agriculture in Africa has greatly remained conventionally (Economic Commission for Africa 10).
Poverty and environmental deterioration in Kenya
The implications or signs of the heightened poverty, poor methods of agricultural output and rapid population increase include rising starvation, deteriorated environment, high illiteracy and poor health care provision just to mention a few. A hungry and poor individual will obvious damage the surrounding or environment in order to survive. Through conventional livestock keeping and crop farming systems, these individuals will end up cutting down trees and forests, and over-utilize the marginal lands so that they can obtain food; their animals overgraze or overeat grasslands. In addition, due to failure to access adequate land due to their rising numbers and hindrances from land tenure system, they move to cities that are congested as they look for substitute employment. When get into these cities they start up shanty buildings in slums, a place where they experience worse conditions like lack of safe and clean water and general poor sanitation. The cumulative or increasing effect of such matters leads to the formation of vicious cycle where environmental deterioration, poverty and deficiency intensifies worsens. Hence, the change from a healthy or quality environment to the current status can be traced back from many years (Economic Commission for Africa 12).
Poverty level increased in the year 1990s. Research carried out on the poverty, welfare levels and individual and household features indicated that individuals surviving in poverty increased from 48.8 percent in the year 1990 t0 55.4 in the year 2001. In the year 2003, the number rose to 56 percent. Recently, the geographical widespread of poverty is large; 75 percent of the poor individuals residing in the rural areas and majority of the poor individuals in the urban areas living in the peri-urban and slum areas. One of the areas in Kenya that has the greatest number of individual living with poverty is North Eastern Province (International Monetary Fund 9).
Currently, the major challenge facing Kenya is poverty. The association between environment and poverty is multifaceted. Poor individuals are mostly the victims of deterioration of the environment that is caused by other people within the society. In addition, poor individuals mostly engage in activities, which led to environmental deterioration. Poverty contributes to destruction and over-use of the natural resources disregarding environmental sustainability that are long-term in pursuit of short-term ambitions. The economy and livelihoods of the people of Kenya depend greatly on the natural resources like animals, water, air, plants and land. However, these resources are under tremendous pressure from unsustainable utilization leading to environmental deterioration. The main challenge is to use the resources in order to improve the Kenyan economy as the environment is saved from the unfavorable effects of soil erosion, general degradation, pollution and deforestation (Mbuya 4).
Natural and environmental resources deterioration forms a major challenge to the development process of Kenya. The environmental deterioration is mostly due to poor waste management, pollution, destruction of water catchments, poverty, desertification and deforestation. In Kenya, environmental concerns are mostly due to over dependence on firewood, charcoal burning, mining and logging activities especially in the rural dwellings. As a result, the population increases and slums develop. Increase in population has unfavorable effects on the natural resources and environment including marginal land encroachment and misuse of the resources. Kenya is also faced by natural calamities like drought and floods, which lead to crop, house and animal destruction. The cumulative effects lead to environmental deterioration and decline the land potential, particularly in the semi-arid and arid areas. Therefore, people’s living conditions become tough leading to over-exploitation of the available resources. Kenyans, both living in urban and rural areas experience severe environmental problems, which exacerbate the situation of poverty and make sustainable improvement an indefinable objective (Mbuya 4).
Indicators of poverty in Kenya
In Kenya, some of the main determinants of poverty are as follows; household size, location, agricultural production, level of education, accessibility to land, gender and livestock ownership. Factors that contribute to poverty include low agricultural output and lack of access to markets, underemployment, unemployment, inadequate availability of basic needs and residing in places with poor and deteriorating surroundings or environment. The poor individuals add their poverty to cultural beliefs and traditions, and natural calamities, which hinder women from accessing productive resources (International Monetary Fund 10).
Poverty indicators in Kenya include lack of education, landlessness, low productivity, prevalence of sicknesses, inequality in capital and land access, susceptibility to poverty particularly for children and women. Poverty level has been increasing in Kenya for about 30 years. Approximately half the population in Kenya are poor and about 7.5 million of the individual who are poor survive in extreme poverty. The number of people living in the rural areas is about 80 percent of the population. Most of the people in Kenya reside in places which have high to medium potential for farming that consist of approximately 18 percent of the territory of the country (Nassiuma 5).
The population growth in Kenya has tripled in the last 30 years, resulting to a rising pressure on the environmental resources, increasing poverty levels and widening gap of income. All these minimize chances of gains in health, employment, incomes, education, food and security. Some of the factors that contribute to rural poverty in Kenya are as follows; poor governance, poor transport network, high costs of education and medical care, vulnerability to diseases like HIV/AIDS and low wages, underemployment and unemployment. Moreover, there is difficulty in obtaining money or resources for self-employment and low agricultural output, aggravated by land deterioration and land tenure insecurity. In the rural part of Kenya, poor individuals include herders, households headed by female or women, small farmers, HIV/AIDS orphans, farm laborers, individuals with disability and semi-skilled and unskilled employees. In addition, the most vulnerable group is the women since they lack equal access to economic and social resources or assets (IFAD par.2-6).
Poverty provokes a great susceptibility to the alteration of the environment. From a historical perspective, a high reliance on the natural resources or environment does not automatically mean susceptibility for local individuals. Lack of appropriate management approaches and the desire of individuals for the growth of economy combine to generate overexploitation of the land. As a result, they lead to the deterioration of the environment and in return cause poverty due to low productivity. Causes and consequences of the environmental alteration that caused by human beings are not distributed equally in the world. They vary in different areas and countries where their effects may pose some threats to the sustainability of man-environmental associations that are short-term or long-term. Human activities bring changes to the environment but the rate and scale of their effects have continued or grown for last century. These activities range from depleting soils, diverting water sources and clearing land in order to enlarging the chemical flows of the ecosphere and initiating modern synthetic materials. These changes have led to depletion of important resources, destruction of valued environment, and decline of the generation of agricultural products and human activities (Jeanne, Kasperson &Turner 245).
Environmental problems leading to environmental deterioration in Kenya
Kenya experiences incredible growth and development challenges in almost all sectors. Poverty has become endemic, deforestation persists and infant death rate is still high. The total number of individuals, how they survive and where they exist all have an effect to the environment. Individuals change the surrounding or environment by utilizing natural resources, generating waste and clear vegetation for the purpose of development. In return, those changes in the environment have effects on the well-being and health of the people. For instance, rapid urbanization due to increased population growth, air, soil and water pollution and deforestation all cause great challenges in Kenya for policymakers. Environmental deterioration or degradation in Kenya has led to great number of environmental risks and hazards, which have affected the safety and health of individuals. People living in the lowland parts of the western Kenya like Kakamega, experience continuous flood disasters while in the central part they suffer from dangerous landslides (Thaxton par.1-3).
Deforestation is one of the environmental problems leading to failure of development in Kenya since it contributes to environmental deterioration. Deforestation refers to the process of damaging and clearing of forests in order to obtain wood for use or consumption. It also refers to clearing of vegetation for agricultural purposes and, human and frontiers settlement. In addition, fragmentation and degradation contributes to environmental deterioration in Kenya. Degradation means permanent or temporary diminishing in the structure and density of the crop cover or composition of the species, resulting from the elimination of trees and plants significant in the life cycle of other living organisms. On the other hand, fragmentation result from road building and equivalent human interference in the forest places. This practice makes the edges of the forest to be susceptible to increased degradation by the alteration of the micro-climates, invasion of the strange species, loss of inhabitant species and further interference by individuals (Mabogunje 4-11).
Kenya is one of the African countries that have been hit by desertification, an environmental problem leading to environmental deterioration. Approximately 67 percent of Kenya is semi-arid or arid and most of the people rely on the natural resources for their livelihood. Desertification is as a result of climatic fluctuations; though partly is has been caused by wood cutting, land misuse, overgrazing and soil exhaustion (DeBlii, Murphy & fouberg 576).
Similarly, loss of soil fertility has contributed to environmental deterioration and in return to poverty since it leads to low productivity. Loss of soil fertility occurs when individuals burn the forest continuously especially those individuals attempting to clear the vegetation for hunting purposes. Individuals residing in the rural parts of the Kenya burn dry grasses in their farms so that they can plant, this leads to loss of soil fertility leading low productivity and eventually to poverty (Luanda par.23).
Biodiversity refers to the various types of animal and plant species in a specific area. Forest reserves in Kenya consist of many different types of trees. It has approximately 35,000 defined species of fauna and flora. Environmental challenges facing Kenya are decrease in wildlife populations, soil erosion, water scarcity and deforestation. This is as a result of increased land used for livestock grazing and agricultural output, and rising need for wood for timber and fuel. All this practices contribute to environmental deterioration since approximately 64 percent of the people in Kenya dwell in the rural areas and depend highly on agriculture as their main source of income. On the contrary, only 20 percent of the land in Kenya is meant for cultivation and with the drastic population growth rate, there is incredible pressure on water and land resources. In addition, persistent loss of natural habitat, deforestation and unlawful poaching has resulted to decrease in many wildlife populations including animals like rhinoceros, wildebeests and elephants. Inadequate practices to control against land devastation, deforestation and discharge of toxic or poisonous substances into the environment and water resources has led to loss of diversity (Thaxton par. 7).
Conclusion
Since individuals who are poor suffer from financial constraints, they rely heavily on the environment as their main source of income. When environmental or environmental deterioration happens, the ability of the poor individuals to come up with decisions, which lead to the higher productivity, is limited especially in Kenya since one of the indicators of poverty is lack of education or illiteracy. Therefore, it is until the issues of reliance on the environment by the poor individuals that the quality of the environment will be restored and poverty will be alleviated (Word Press par.4).
In conclusion, environmental deterioration and depletion of natural resources have increased due to the cumulative effects of the drastic population growth, industrialization, intensive agriculture and urbanization. The main reason for the unfavorable trends of environment in Africa particularly Kenya is due to high level of poverty. The poverty within the country is the main cause and consequence of environmental deterioration.
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