The aftermath of recent flooding in various counties is alarming as people blame mother nature for our own mistakes and greed.
Global warming may have something to do with flooding, but human actions and greed have played a bigger part.
Many are perplexed at the level of flooding in Nairobi and Narok. There is no reason to be puzzled; the chickens are coming home to roost. Effects of years of poor planning, neglect of the environment and unsustainable development are beginning to register.
Better get used as this is likely to be the norm. These floods have not yet claimed life in a big scale but its only a matter of time. We are reaping where we have so carelessly sowed; sleepwalking down a road to assured destruction.
In ideal situation, the arrival of the rainy season should be good news and/or omen to farmers countrywide. However, this year, this portends gloom.
Over the past few years, we have experienced severe floods and other natural disasters. But too often, our response at county or national level, to these disasters has been chaotic and reactive after we are hit. Through floods, we have lost lives and property worth millions destroyed completely.
Because changes in the climate and weather patterns are constant; adequate awareness and preparation is urgently now needed for the unexpected but the planning should, like the weather pattern, be constant.
While it is vital to have mechanisms for urgent fixes to address unexpected tragedies, it is worth exploring more long-term ideas and planning better response to disasters, especially floods that are increasingly becoming a perennial problem.
The yester years, floods and other recent tragedies like collapsed buildings in Nairobi, fire tragedies in slums and cholera outbreaks due to torrential rain and/or poor hygiene have consistently proved disastrously how we are always caught off guard, precisely because we have failed to learn from our past mistakes as a people and get things right.
One expert in minister of Water and Irrigation once put it that people living in swamps should leave before the swamp swallows them, then the government should be or have thought of solving the massive housing problems especially in and around the places like Budalang'i, Narok and cities like Nairobi that have been experiencing this menace. It is unwise to limit the effects of floods to displacement of people from their homes. The implications of heavy rains and flooding goes beyond a temporary housing inconvenience.
But it has consistently destroyed crops; disrupted food production and, ultimately, caused food shortage. The government should prioritise disaster risk reduction in its plans and critically make funds available for emergency response because lack of funding greatly impedes quick response. The Ministry of Water and Irrigation and National Environmental Management (Nema) should take a key role in carving a sustainable flood management strategy for the nation and enforce it.
-Mr Onyango is an advocate of High Court of Kenya.
