The Plastic that Binds Us

The beginning of December shouldn’t always catch me off-guard. I’ve been meaning to do this all year- track my living to see if I’m sustainable and what improvements and adjustments I need to make. At this stage in the world’s development, my feeling is that the more of us that do this, the greater a chance the Earth has to survive. There are so many examples of how we, as humans, have failed the Earth: air pollution, senseless animal killings, plastic killing off seabirds, plastic in general, development that destroys nature for no reason… it’s a devastating picture, and for some reason 2017 is the year I’ve seen it all in its terrible blood-soaked strokes.

My journey with "sustainable living" is not new, but over the years it has been anything but sustainable. I’ve done the environmental fads: I’ve ditched bottled water on and off; I’ve taken to walking to get  wherever I need to be on and off; I’ve switched to more environmentally friendly hygiene products on and off. What I’d like to do is do these things (and several more) in the ON mode.

One of those other things is a change in diet, because with the air travel necessitated by my current job, my carbon footprint is overwhelming! For just 4 of the 9 (maybe more) return flights this year, I'm almost at 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. This is so bad, given that the average footprint for people in Kenya is 0.30 metric tons, and the worldwide target to combat climate change is 2 metric tons. You can check your footprint using this tool: <iframe width="710" height="1300" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" src="https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx"></iframe>

But this lifestyle change will require its own dedicated page. Let me focus first on the most pervasive cause for concern, and perhaps the hardest to change.

At the Oceans Conference in New York in June, my colleagues and I were appalled at the state of the oceans due to human pollution. Plastic is choking the life out of the seas, and the many creatures that depend on the sea for survival. The plight of plastic on Albatross birds on Midway Island is one of the tens of videos that brought tears to our eyes-  Midway Island is in the middle of nowhere. There are no human habitations for 2000 miles, and yet, here are these defenseless birds dying because of the bits of plastic we throw away each day. Its become apparent that we, as an entire world, were duped by an industry whose sole goal is profit. 

The plastics industry somehow convinced us that this indestructible material (plastic) could also be disposable. We substituted it in things that were already frivolous -paper straws for plastic straws for instance. Plastic Forks. Plastic Spoons. Plastics Bottles. Plastic Shopping Bags. It's stuff that is easily replaceable but has made such a dramatic mark on us and our lifestyles that it took nearly a decade to effect a ban on plastic shopping bags in Kenya, with legal challenges that threatened to overturn the ban. 

Having fallen for the industry trick, we've become insatiable in our hunger for plastic. And now everything is dying because of it. Entire species are at risk. If they are not eating it (and thus dying of starvation because plastic cannot be digested and so the brain is tricked that the stomach is full and sends no hunger signals), then they are consuming harmful algal blooms that thrive in warmer ocean conditions (occasioned both by climate change and by plastic pollution that traps heat in the ocean) and dying as a result. Whatever the case, our addiction to plastic is revealing unconscionable unintended consequences.

And I’m part of the problem. Living this new Nairobi lifestyle means eating out and ordering in more than I did growing up. With each of these events, the total amount of single-use plastic items I use has increased. From two straws in a cocktail glass, to a plastic fork and knife wrapped in plastic, to a toothpick also separately wrapped in plastic, I have fueled this great ocean killing spree. So, in a bid to sleep easier at night, I stopped using all these things. I actively request the serving staff to NOT include a straw with my drink. I have a standing request for all online food deliveries to come sans cutlery or condiments. I roped some family members in with me, and some friends, but we’re not even making a dent. So what next? 

Restaurants are getting involved: Kudos to J's and the Tin Roof Cafe for saying no to plastic straws. At the Ocean's Conference, one great concrete step suggested was a "4R" strategy: Refuse-Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. You and I as consumers, have the ability, right and duty to refuse single-use plastic like straws and cutlery and condiments we know we won't use. Let's exercise this right. Because all these items are demand driven, restaurants won't continue purchasing them if their patrons don't want them any more. 

Of course the bigger step is the change in mindset: Carrying your own water bottle is not a status symbol but an act of conscious living. I've even started carrying real cutlery in a side pocket of my handbag. When my sister posted about this the other day, a friend asked "What happens when you want to eat yoghurt and there is no straw?" The answer (use a spoon) is now in a side pocket in my bag :) If you think that's crazy and will never catch on, imagine how many plastic spoons you've used in your lifetime that are ALL currently sitting in some landfill somewhere or floating in the sea. There must be thousands, all attributed to just one person. If that caught on, and put us in the bind we're in today, why can't handbag/pocket cutlery? ;-)

Conference Failure Series: Statements from Civil Society

When did the civil society conference participants decide that the only way to communicate their powerful statements was to conform to the extremely boring, and largely ineffective, manner of dark-suit-and-tie speeches? When did they decide that their actions on the ground could only be communicated through speeches read in monotone voices standing at podiums? Why did it stop being OK to speak off-the-cuff, about real experiences and not generic ones, using phrases like “sustainable pathways for Indigenous Peoples?” and what are those anyway?!!!

These are my thoughts as I plug away at the back of the room at a CSO consultation on land, one of the most important issues of our time. I am bored to tears, but I have a job to do—to try and get the message out, in the most neutral manner humanly possible, without distorting it. The CSOs make this just too easy. There is nothing said that inspires, nothing said that instigates any form of reaction other than a stifled yawn.

I would like to scream at the Kenyan presenter who knows so much more about the county legislation than his strait-jacket speech has permitted him to say, and at the beautifully coiffed Chadian presenter, who obviously doesn’t know enough about the African women she claims to represent.

We’ve decided that there is only one way to communicate at conferences- a boring, dull way. We are actually unable to participate in “open dialogues.” We cannot imagine a situation where we are invited to actually voice the fears, and challenges, hopes and aspirations of those we claim to represent. We seem to have actively made ourselves the barrier on the bridge between the government and the people. 

It’s not about screaming and shouting on the streets (although that will always have its place), and it’s definitely not about the prosaic speech to fit into what we’ve decided conferences are about. It’s really about remembering our constituents, and speaking for them. But maybe we’ve lost those too… as we line up for our daily subsistence allowances, and forgo attending any discussions not specifically labelled “CSO”—forgetting that this just propagates the business-as-usual scenarios we’re known for preaching against.

E-Waste and Sustainability

A few years ago, I hosted a dinner for some friends at home, in Nairobi. As we tried to sort out the music situation, one of them noticed the seriously old VCR sitting neatly among all the other slightly newer equipment under the TV. He burst out into incredulous laughter- he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a VCR. To be honest, I'd never even thought of tossing it, even though it's completely out of use.
A couple of years after that, at grad school in Boston, we got a number of emails from seemingly helpful fellow students, looking to "donate" their 3- or 4 -year old laptops to "kids in Africa....If you're going to be anywhere on the continent, please let me know. It's in really good condition, but I just need to move onto something newer and lighter." There is nothing wrong with donating a used laptop to helpless kids on a "poor" continent...or is there?

These memories have got me thinking quite seriously about how we dispose of all our old equipment and gadgetry- especially as a larger percentage of the population move into US-like levels of consumption of new generation phones, and the broader population is subjected to increasingly cheap, short-life products.

The problem with e-waste is mainly the danger to human health and the environment, with a number of compounds found in e-waste found to contain cancer causing elements. (Thanks to ewaste guide for this comprehensive list). This problem is further compounded when this waste finds its way to the developing world, with most   (if not all countries) lacking the capacity to deal with it. It thus becomes a threat to human health and the environment, very much like outright dumping of toxic waste in the developing world. (See Trafigura Incident here.)

In mid September 2014, in Geneva Switzerland, the ninth meeting of the Open-ended Working Group on the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal will convene. The overarching objective of the Basel Convention is to protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects of hazardous wastes. Coming into force in 1992, it has been slow to agree basic definitions on hazardous waste, and, as with all multilateral environmental agreements, has no power of enforcement. Hence the toxic waste dumped by the multinational firm, Trafigura, that caused the deaths of many in the Ivory Coast, as well as long term health problems, has never been physically cleared from the country. Neither have those who suffered terribly been properly addressed and compensated.

Among the issues to be discussed is international guidelines on e-waste. These have been contentious for a number of reasons, chief among them is that new and emerging economies, backed by some industry players, would like electronic products that have not yet come to the end of their lives to be deemed "non-waste"and thus be fit for export, with the exporting countries having no responsibility to the importing countries-- not even a notification that these products have a very limited shelf-life and that they will soon be waste products. It remains to be seen whether these guidelines will be adopted.

But on the local front, the issue of e-waste is already being discussed and implemented. In 2011, Safaricom partnered with the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) to launch a recycling  scheme in a bid to extend the life of its products. Several recycling spots were introduced all over the country, and the scheme has been pretty effective in collecting and refurbishing those phones that still had some life in them. In 2013, this partnership expanded, with the Communications Commission of Kenya working together to raise awareness on the dangers of poor disposal of e-waste (see press article here).

However, what happens to those products that are irreparable? Many times, these products end up in dumps, where young people scavenge for them and then melt them to try and regain the copper the products sometimes contain. The act of burning them releases toxic compounds that have been proven carcinogens, or are just outright poisonous like arsenic.  But even before the burning process, these "dead products" leak live deadly chemicals into the soil, compromising our food and water quality, and thus directly affecting our health and ability to reproduce healthy children.

In East Africa, Kenya leads in technology consumption,as seen in this chart.
 Looking at the slightly dated figures, Kenya (and, indeed the region) is not yet at dangerous levels. 



 But we don't need to get to these levels in order to do something.
"Something" could include:

• Conscious individuals NOT throwing away our old phones, DVD players, VCRs, and TVs until we know exactly where they go;
• Calling on the government to push for Basel Convention Regional Center for East Africa to be based in Kenya to encourage proper training on hazardous waste disposal, as well as the requisite tech transfer;
• Engaging the tech multinationals setting up shop on our soil to re-export end-of-life goods to the developed world, where there is the capacity to deal with these products sustainably;
• Encouraging other companies to establish recycling points for their products, if these products are still recyclable- like Safaricom has done.

Other suggestions are very welcome... so that we don't end up like this.

Creating Sustainability in Growing Consumerist Societies

I live in a generation and in a geographical location where I'm constantly thrown between wealth creation, consumerism and sustainability. My line of work is a perfect balance between a totally unsustainable jet-setting lifestyle, and the noble provision of information regarding ongoing sustainable development and environment negotiations around the world. The irony of the use of new technologies and media we employ to disseminate the information we gather from these on-site meetings never fails to escape me.
But the organization has heard good things about its work and the use of our reports in policy briefs which in turn influence decision-makers, so I sleep a little easier every night (even with the knowledge that my carbon footprint is huge- you can calculate your carbon footprint here, thanks to The Nature Conservancy).

In the year 2000, former UN Secretary General Koffi Annan proposed, and states agreed to, the millennium development goals (MDGs)- a set of 8 goals aimed at addressing the major challenges of the developing world to be achieved by 2015. Courtesy of the UN Millennium Development Goals website, these goals are:

Picture courtesy of Millennium Campaign Africa

Unfortunately, the world has failed to achieve most of the goals. This is due in part to the process that lead to the acceptance of the goals, and the potential unrealistic target dates given the rise in population and poor infrastructure in the most vulnerable countries and regions. But it is largely because these goals did not address the root causes of the problems, but merely treated the visible symptoms.

In the last 2 years or so, some conscious policy-influencers and decision-makers have been engaged in a process to create the new MDGs. These have been dubbed the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the process has been as rigorous as any that seeks to draw worldwide participation. The United Nations, that is leading this process, even asked for submissions and preferences through the MyWorld2015 survey (which some have found to be counter-intuitive to the cause of global sustainable development). Several other efforts over the last 2 years took place, in a bid to make this process as inclusive and participatory as possible. The entire process and the negotiations towards compromised, attainable goals have been conducted under the broad banner of the Post-2015 development agenda.

On 3 May 2014, the Open Working Group (comprising concerned member states of the UN and other stakeholders) tasked with working on the SDGs released the Zero Draft on the Proposed Sustainable Development  Goals. The draft includes a lengthy preamble containing states affirmations and reaffirmations on making the world a more equal place, as well as 17 distinct goals to be attained by 2030. These are:

1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere

2. End hunger, achieve food security and adequate nutrition for all, and promote sustainable agriculture

3. Attain healthy life for all at all ages

4. Provide equitable and inclusive quality education and life-long learning opportunities for all

5. Attain gender equality, empower women and girls everywhere

6. Secure water and sanitation for all for a sustainable world

7. Ensure access to affordable, sustainable, and reliable modern energy services for all

8. Promote strong, inclusive and sustainable economic growth and decent work for all

9. Promote sustainable industrialization

10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

11. Build inclusive, safe and sustainable cities and human settlements

12. Promote sustainable consumption and production patterns

13. Promote actions at all levels to address climate change

14. Attain conservation and sustainable use of marine resources, oceans and seas

15. Protect and restore terrestrial ecosystems and halt all biodiversity loss

16. Achieve peaceful and inclusive societies, rule of law, effective and capable institutions

17. Strengthen and enhance the means of implementation and global partnership for sustainable development

They strike me as being both noble and necessary. The Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform describes the goals as follows: "Sustainable Development Goals are ... action oriented, global in nature and universally applicable to all countries, while taking into account different national realities, capacities and levels of development and respecting national policies and priorities. They integrate economic, social and environmental aspects and recognize their interlinkages in achieving sustainable development in all its dimensions." This zero draft is the most recent of efforts to synthesise all the views  and priorities of UN member states. The fact that it is a zero draft reflects that fact that there is still more negotiation to be done.

It's a great effort, but perhaps what remains to be seen is whether these proposed goals: address the underlying concerns of systemic economic inequality; take into account the role, function, and knowledge of customary, indigenous and local communities; and smooth the road to a sustainably prosperous world for present and future societies. The last idea is one to be dwelt upon perhaps the most, as the promise of prosperity through the 20th century conjured up images of cars on wide paved roads, leisure trips via airplanes, big plates of rich food, big concrete houses and spacious offices in tall air-conditioned buildings, happy industries producing for local and international populations, and many other shiny things.

Much as it was a wrong initial vision, it is what people have come to accept and expect. It is the reason many young graduates will not consider blue-collar jobs. These are the measures of success for us, and for many in the developing world.

To erase that vision and replace it with bicycle rides to work, small vegetarian meals, do-it-yourself gardens, and containers converted into smart houses seems more like a rip-off than a reward for good behaviour.

What incentives can effectively elicit the desirable behaviour-change? Perhaps none. But what can be done, in order for 2030 to be a year of celebration and not of mourning (as 2015 will be) is to strive to change the education system right from the word go. Very much like the campaigns to recycle in the US were driven by school-going children, what must happen in the developing world is an effort to reprogram the minds of young children concerning what success looks like. If they believe that it is less about having "stuff" and more about experiences, then sustainability may be achieved in their lifetime. But education alone is not enough. Actions speak louder than words in text books: they have to see it in action. I only need one phone, but I have three. It is physically impossible for me to drive two cars at once, but I have them all the same.

What are you willing to give up to give the next generation a chance?

And Then We Bought Into The Lie...

...that the system was going to fail anyway, so why not just jump ship. In this quest to allow children (real, or desired) to have a better life than their parents, we began to tear down the system.

Instead of supporting the public education system that had consistently and ably provided us with a decent education, we took our children to international schools, and then sent them abroad. Instead of giving back to the public health system- for the numerous times we had used it to get us back to good- we pumped our hard earned cash into the private health care system (not realizing that it was the same doctors who also consulted and worked within the public health system in our towns and cities).

Instead of maintaining the public garbage system, and the need to keep our streets and neighbourhoods clean, we allowed corruption to seep through the system so badly, that all we have now are relics of the dustbins that once drove around the cities and towns. What we have instead is a host of privatized companies now providing the services we still pay the government for.

But what hurts most is the things we do to ourselves that destroy us. Let me not even get into the rant concerning the cross-country railway line that should have been build 28 years ago, but that is still a pipe dream because some politician (WHO IS STILL HOLDING OFFICE!!!) stole the donor-funding that was earmarked for it. No, let's stick with the less dagger-in-the-back twisting pain that is our road transport. Growing up, my parents and older brothers were full of stories about the buses they took from home to school, and to work, and to church, and to shop. The image of these buses plying any route I know are only an unclear memory in my head. Yet again, this fiend privatization strikes again- causing someone to have a crazy idea that if they can create an elite of matatu-owning people, Kenya would be a better place. So they began- using every mechanism to undermine the government-run transport system, and now we have matatus. It's interesting that the debate about matatus only revolves around replacing 14-seaters, but completely ignores the fact that we had a regulated, affordable system that works, and that we STILL have the vehicles to make that system work again. No, it doesn't- because the very people who destroyed the system (and who are currently reaping the profits from the privatized network of road demons) are the people we elected to create better public policy for us. Did anyone think about the implications for shutting down a public transport system would play out? The number of man-hours lost in traffic (by my very conservative estimation its about 40,000 in the Westlands area only) each day, and what that means for development? The number of lives lost as matatu drivers strive to meet their quotas?
Would it have mattered if they did?

And how did we do this? Well, we didn't speak up when the services began to wane. We didn't raise a furor when the teachers complained about their salaries, or the doctors and nurses complained about the conditions they had to work in. We kept silent when our brothers and sisters in the city councils all over the town became greedy and corrupt, and completely mismanaged the monies we entrusted them with to maintain the cleanliness of our shared spaces. We allowed politicians to politicize the transport system, and systematically shut down every avenue for affordable public transport every Kenyan deserves. Those of us who could bought cars, and those of us who couldn't began to walk in silence.

What kind of citizens are we if we allow the public officials who have failed us to get away scott-free? An Ethiopian friend told me the other day that Kenya is seen as the capitalist utopia of Africa. If this is what we are striving for, and privatization at all costs (and usually at the expense of the 70% who cannot afford this uber expensive private life) is what we are working towards, then we have arrived.

Silence* kills societies that work. But let us not live under the illusion that this is "all we have to work with." That is a lie. It is not. We make these choices every day. In our history in this society-creation we had to do post independence, we made some pretty bad choices. But  it's still our country. We can start making some good ones- good ones for us all, not just a few of us.

*Song by Muthoni, The Drummer Queen

Betrayed

Betray: \bi-ˈtrā, bē-\: to fail or desert especially in time of need

The emotion that this paints is one of pain, and of hopelessness. One of dashed hopes; disappointments.
This is where I go, every time I think of home. Every time I think about who I am in relation to who I am supposed to be. The African against the african. The Kenyan against the Kenyan-from-Nairobi.


The older generation hate that latter phrase. They don't believe it to be true of anyone. Nairobi is not a place you come from. There are no shambas in Nairobi, no soil on which to cultivate, or land on which to graze cattle (kettle). Not only is that not permitted, it would also be callous and uncultured to practice any form of rural-ity in the city. For it is a city- a place of hard cash and concrete and unrelentingly heat on Monday afternoons in the stuffy Parliament building.


But that generation, now dying out, is wrong. Because, we are here- those of us who identify ourselves quite strictly by that phrase...Kenyan-from-Nairobi. The city is all we know. And to make matters even worse, we only identify with certain parts of the city, denoting how well our parents did for us (although nobody ever says this too loudly anymore...One Kenya, One People and all). So I identify with the west of nairobi and all the "rich-kid" sneers it evokes. Not that I'm a rich kid- far from it. Just that my parents got lucky, and landed up in what was once a leafy suburb (now turned concrete jungle) that catered to, and still does, the "upper middle class."


I have school mates here in the US, who are striving to be able to have their kids identify with that part of city. Proof of having "made it." Like getting into this school is not enough. Like having to pay all the money to be here is nothing. All that matters is that you live on the white right side of town in a developing country on the other side of the world.

But it is not with them that my quarrel lies. It is not even with my elderly parents, who were only trying to do the best for us by sanitizing us of any real culture (because culture means memories of climbing up the social ladder, and sometimes those are bad) and leaving us "better" than they could ever have been under colonialism.


It is with the generation born at independence and just after- that generation that could have reinterpreted this sticky concept of identity for us- filled that cultureless gap with vital information about who we are, and why we are that and not something else. That is the generation that betrayed us. Instead of taking the privileges their parents afforded them and using them to re-member (or 'member')  an identity for a fractured country, they fell into 'businessing', and amassing, and "investing" and "building." Not that any of these things were wrong in themselves. Just that they are wrong if done in a vacuum. And that is where Kenya lay as they began their exploits.


In a cultureless vacuum. And so when tribalism reared its ugly head to fill that void, it found no resistance. On the contrary, it was welcomed. Because, you see, when the amassing and businessing and building and investing was on a slump, and minds were more open to thought, there was nothing- nothing of higher inspiration, nothing of greater good, no bigger-picture scenes, nothing. The most natural thought that could occur in that void was the thought of self.

And that self sought similar selves to be conjoined to. So the ethnic nation-building spirits that divided the land of their fathers possessed them, and they were ravaged by that demon called ethnicity. That demon that only destroys, tears down, tramples. But they had lost the window of opportunity to be exorcised that had presented itself in the 1980s, just after the attempted coup. They could have refused to take in what they were told...that X was blacker than them and therefore up to no god, that Y was a schemer, and thus out to finish them. They could have chosen to remember that it was Onyango who shared his books in class, and Kimani who was the best goalkeeper in last week's game, and Ngaira who's mother had given you the biscuits, and Chep who painted your nails for the wedding. And that X and Y didn't matter. People with individual talents and quirks and energies did (and do). We could have been one, had we rejected that notion of apartness that so clearly identifies us now.


But my older brothers and sisters failed us.


Lucky for us, desperation is surely a greater mother of invention than necessity- but if it makes us quibble, let's say she is the mother of innovation instead. Desperation has driven generation Michael Jackson/Whitney Houston to come up with "innovative solutions" in a bid to reclaim our identity. The problem is, there are about as many innovations as there are people. 

Some of us deny our identity as Kenyans- we're too "other" to really do the "Kenyan thing," (whatever that connotes). So we only associate with white and brown skinned people. Everyone else is too dark for us, has too many secrets that we'd rather not know. And besides, this truly cleanses us from the rot that hides beneath, and makes us international citizens-able to live and be anywhere, living seamless lives in Vienna and Sydney and San Fransisco and Cape Town.
Others have created for us a "Kenyan-other class" that calls itself truly Kenyan, drops all actually Western names but tries hard to Westernise all cultural names (Wanjiroh, Shiquoh...I'm not terribly sure where in the Greek/Latin spectrum these lie, but surely they must lie somewhere..). This group identifies with all that is foreign- we colonize it and then try to clone it: from sounds, to art, to accents, to clothing, to architecture.
Then there are those of us who are just striving to make it to the other side of town (that white side I mentioned before). The problem is, even as we make the move, we're still "outsiders"- we didn't go to the "right" schools, we don't speak English the way the natives of this place do...but we're here finally, and nobody is going to move us. So we colonize too- by sheer numbers. Because numbers mean that we're not the only ones in the neighbourhood that don't speak like the natives... we're not the only ones playing music loudly in these ridiculously quiet neighbourhoods. Numbers mean "they" are different; they don't fit in. We're safe, and we've made it.

That's just three groups...I'll come back later and file all the others into these staid boxes that my mind has created.