A human being is one of tritons of living organisms that inhabit the earth. As a senior living organism which governs and takes control over the nature, human being is associated with most of physical and biological changes that appear on the earth.
Normally, all living organisms need food to grow, reproduce, move, and perform different metabolic activities that enable it to stay healthy. A living organism gets food from the nature. Once the nature is stressed, the life on earth is stressed too. Sometimes, a human being as an umbrella and reasonable organism doesn’t remember that he is responsible for the protection of the nature against different kinds of stress. Yet, some of his activities are the main source of this stress.
The main stress the nature is facing today is the climate change. Such situation results in developing countries to become highly vulnerable. To illustrate, changing rainfall patterns contribute to frequent and severe flooding in Rwanda to a higher extent. Elsewhere, there is a theoretical link between climate change and rainfall even though it’s hard to find clear evidence as the record of measurements is short and doesn’t cover all parts of the country.
The field of agriculture is severely compromised due to loss of land, shorter growing seasons, and more uncertainty about what and when to plant. For example, in Northern Province of Rwanda, in Musanze district, closer to the road ahead to Rubavu near Byangabo center, there is a severe flooding in a valley which was formerly a very productive soil for the neighboring population in terms of food crops.
When you reach that area, you can realize that it is a dry valley which is now becoming a swamp, as the local people revealed that this water appears there since three years. This may be supported by rainfall data collected by the national center of meteorology in areas covered by Busogo station, which shows that there has been an increase of the annual precipitation five years ago compared to the years before 2008. The water covers the land after each heavy rainfall because of much water running from slopes of the surrounding hills. This flood destroys all agricultural activities in the valley, because the water level can reach 50 cm above the soil.
Would you mind taking responsibility to fight against climate change? Is it worth acting? How do you expect the nature to be for example in the next 50 years? Government officers, business owners, people from finance institution and civil society will be gathered at the UN head office on this September 23 to the Climate Summit to share their commitments and fought that can slow down the rate of climate change. What would be your message if you selected to be on the panel to this summit? What do you think your leaders should emphasize on, on behalf of their people?
I think it is a concern of all of us to work hand in hand, both public and private institutions, business owners and non-governmental organizations to adapt to and mitigate the climate change so that we can continue to develop and lift ourselves out of poverty and ensure the food security. It is important to advocate for fight against climate change and any of its factors. It is therefore imperative to advocate for the reduction of green house gases emission, removal or reduction of human activities that exert any kind of stress to the nature (like deforestation, illegal mining, etc), forestation and reforestation by promoting the spirit of “cut one and plant three”, etc. Family planning is something we cannot forget as we are talking about climate change mitigation, only that the more the population increases, the more the nature degrade the reason being that they need too much from the nature to survive; hence the climate change is inevitable.
We should transmit our intact nature to the next generation if we are unable to make it better.
Let us act locally, and impact globally.
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