Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Strategies in Kenya

Abstract

To determine the climate changes that are due to natural variability and those due to human activities is quite challenging, just like delineating the impacts. Moreover, it is equally difficult to ascertain the adaptive strategies for coping with the climate changes and in particular for developing countries like Kenya. While climate change is a global phenomenon, the impacts are more or less specific to local areas such as observed in Kenyan case. Therefore climate change impacts adaptation strategies are appropriately applicable to a given local perspective. The study investigated the main indicators of climate change and effective adaptive strategies that can be employed in Kenya. Based on online questionnaire survey, the study established unpredictable rainfall patterns as the major indicator of climate change in the country, while water harvesting and change of cropping methods are the best adaptive strategies.     

Hybrid process for heavy metal removal from wastewater sludge.

Bioleaching processes have been demonstrated to be effective technologies in removing heavy metals from wastewater sludge, but long hydraulic retention times are typically required to operate these bioprocesses. A hybrid process (coupling biological and chemical processes) has been explored in laboratory pilot-scale experiments for heavy metals (cadmium [Cd], copper [Cu], chromium [Cr], and zinc [Zn]) removal from three types of sludge (primary sludge, secondary activated sludge, and a mixture of primary and secondary sludge). The hybrid process consisted of producing a concentrate ferric ion solution followed by chemical treatment of sludges. Ferric iron solution was produced biologically via oxidation of ferrous iron by A. ferrooxidans in a continuous-flow stirred tank (5.2 L) reactor (CSTR). Wastewater sludge filtrate (WSF) containing nutrients (phosphorus and nitrogen) has been used as culture media to support the growth and activity of indigenous iron-oxidizing bacteria. Results showed that total organic carbon (TOC) concentrations of the culture media in excess of 235 mg/L were found to be inhibitory to bacterial growth. The oxidation rate increased as ferrous iron concentrations ranged from 10 to 40 g Fe2+/L. The percentage of ferrous iron (Fe2+) oxidized to ferric iron (Fe3+) increased as the hydraulic retention time (HRT) increased from 12 to 48 h. Successful and complete Fe2+ oxidation was recorded at a HRT of 48 h using 10 g Fe2+/L. Subsequently, ferric ion solution produced by A. ferrooxidans in sludge filtrate was used to solubilize heavy metals contained in wastewater sludge. The best solubilization was obtained with a mixture of primary and secondary sludge, demonstrating a removal efficiency of 63, 71, 49, and 80% for Cd, Cu, Cr, and Zn, respectively.     

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND WATER RATES: A REPLY1

ABSTRACT: Mercer and Morgan provide several valid criticisms of a previous analysis on political influence and water rates. More sophisticated statistical analyses may be justified given the high degree of interdependence among regulated firm variables. Theoretically, there are numerous measures of political activity superior to the one employed in the original analysis; however, data unavailability precludes their use. A better (and yet practical) measure of consumer leverage may be relative dominance by a specific political party. Until relatively easy access is obtained to municipal election data, the possible political variables that can be employed in more elegant analyses are few in number, and each has theoretical limitations.     

Beyond savanna: An evolutionary and environmental psychology approach to behavioral effects of nature scenery in green advertising

Evolutionary psychology has been proposed as an analytic framework for the behavioral effects of landscapes displayed in advertising. In this study, an evolutionary and environmental psychology approach is used to analyze affective reactions to advertising depicting specific natural environments or urban scenes, both prominent ingredients of contemporary advertising imagery. The experimental field study exposed 750 participants at random to one advert of a set of 13 experimental green energy advertisements, each displaying a different biome. Six basic emotional responses (pleasure, arousal, happiness, freedom, safety, and interest) as well as attitude toward the ad and brand attitude were assessed subsequently. Anova and structural equation analysis were used for data analysis. Results of the study confirm the leading opinion on generalized more positive behavioral effects toward visual stimuli representing nature scenes with biospheric contents as opposed to pictures of urban environments or desert settings. In line with earlier empirical research, further findings do not support the hypothesis on an innate preference for savanna landscapes in adults but confirm preferences for images of lush green landscapes with water and familiar biomes. Overall results give significant support to the application of environmental and evolutionary psychology to advertising.     

Place attachment and public acceptance of renewable energy: A tidal energy case study

Efforts by many governments to mitigate climate change by increasing deployment of renewable energy technologies have raised the importance of issues of public acceptance. The ‘NIMBY’ (Not In My Backyard) concept, although popular, has been critiqued as an appropriate and valid way to explain local opposition. This study applies an alternative approach, empirically investigating the role of place attachment and place-related symbolic meanings in explaining public responses to a tidal energy converter in Northern Ireland, said to be the first grid-connected device of its kind in the world. 271 residents in two nearby villages completed questionnaire surveys, three months post-installation, following up preliminary qualitative research using focus groups. Although results indicated predominantly positive and supportive responses to the project, manifest by emotional responses and levels of acceptance, significant differences between residents in each village were also observed. Contrasting patterns of association between place attachment and emotional responses suggest that the project enhanced rather than disrupted place attachments only in one of the two villages. In regression analyses, place attachment emerged as a significant, positive predictor of project acceptance in both places, affirming its value in explaining public response. Place-related symbolic meanings also emerged as significant, with contrasting sets of meanings proving significant in each context. Implications of the findings for research on place attachment and responses to land-use changes, as well as for developers seeking to engage with residents affected by energy projects are discussed.     

Multi-stage sampling for large scale natural resources surveys: a case study of rice and waterfowl

Large-scale sample surveys to estimate abundance and distribution of organisms and their habitats are increasingly important in ecological studies. Multi-stage sampling (MSS) is especially suited to large-scale surveys because of the natural clustering of resources. To illustrate an application, we: (1) designed a stratified MSS to estimate late autumn abundance (kg/ha) of rice seeds in harvested fields as food for waterfowl wintering in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley (MAV); (2) investigated options for improving the MSS design; and (3) compared statistical and cost efficiency of MSS to simulated simple random sampling (SRS). During 2000-2002, we sampled 25-35 landowners per year, 1 or 2 fields per landowner per year, and measured seed mass in 10 soil cores collected within each field. Analysis of variance components and costs for each stage of the survey design indicated that collecting 10 soil cores per field was near the optimum of 11-15, whereas sampling >1 field per landowner provided few benefits because data from fields within landowners were highly correlated. Coefficients of variation (CV) of annual estimates of rice abundance ranged from 0.23 to 0.31 and were limited by variation among landowners and the number of landowners sampled. Design effects representing the statistical efficiency of MSS relative to SRS ranged from 3.2 to 9.0, and simulations indicated SRS would cost, on average, 1.4 times more than MSS because clustering of sample units in MSS decreased travel costs. We recommend MSS as a potential sampling strategy for large-scale natural resource surveys and specifically for future surveys of the availability of rice as food for waterfowl in the MAV and similar areas.     

Patterns of catch and trophic signatures illustrate diverse management requirements of coastal fisheries in Solomon Islands

Coastal fisheries are a critical component of Pacific island food systems; they power village economies and provide nutritious aquatic foods. Many coastal women and men actively fishing in this region rely on multi-species fisheries, which given their extraordinary diversity are notoriously difficult to both characterize, and to manage. Understanding patterns of fishing, diversity of target species and drivers of these patterns can help define requirements for sustainable management and enhanced livelihoods. Here we use a 12-month data set of 8535 fishing trips undertaken by fishers across Malaita province, Solomon Islands, to create fisheries signatures for 13 communities based on the combination of two metrics; catch per unit effort (CPUE) and catch trophic levels. These signatures are in turn used as a framework for guiding suitable management recommendations in the context of community-based resource management. While a key proximate driver of these patterns was fishing gear (e.g. angling, nets or spearguns), market surveys and qualitative environmental information suggest that community fishing characteristics are coupled to local environmental features more than the market value of specific species they target. Our results demonstrate that even within a single island not all small-scale fisheries are equal, and effective management solutions ultimately depend on catering to the specific environmental characteristics around individual communities.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13280-021-01690-z.     

Pacific Islanders’ understanding of climate change: Where do they source information and to what extent do they trust it?

Regional Environmental Change - The experience of environmental stress and attitudes towards climate change was explored for 1226 students at the University of the South Pacific, the foremost...     

Genetic diversity and population structure of the Chinese mitten crab <Emphasis Type="Italic">Eriocheir sinensis</Emphasis> in its native range

The Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis is an indigenous and economically important species in China, but can also be found as invasive species in Europe and America. Mitten crabs have been exploited extensively as a food resource since the 1990s. Despite its ecological and economic importance, the genetic structure of native mitten crab populations is not well understood. In this paper, we investigated the genetic structure of mitten crab populations in China by screening samples from ten locations covering six river systems at six microsatellite loci. Our results provide further evidence that mitten crabs from the River Nanliujiang in Southern China are a genetically differentiated population within the native range of Eriocheir, and should be recognized as a separate taxonomic unit. In contrast, extremely low levels of genetic differentiation and no significant geographic population structure were found among the samples located north of the River Nanliujiang. Based on the reproductive biology of mitten crabs and the geography of their habitat we argue that both natural and human-mediated gene flow are unlikely to fully account for the similar allele frequency distributions at microsatellite loci. Large population sizes of mitten crabs suggest instead that a virtual absence of genetic drift and significant homoplasy of microsatellite alleles have contributed to the observed pattern. Furthermore, a coalescent-based maximum likelihood method indicated a more than two-fold lower effective population size of the Southern population compared to the Northern Group and low but significant levels of gene flow between both areas.