The country’s socio-economic fabric is intricately intertwined with water and energy; they are critical to every aspect of life in Kenya, including ensuring social equity, ecosystem integrity and economic sustainability.
Much of the country’s energy is generated from hydropower, and water supplies for agriculture, domestic and industrial usage is provided through energy. Insufficient water availability is already apparent in various locations across the country, slowing down development gains and aspirations under Vision 2030. Such would cause escalation of natural resources conflicts as well as severe crop and livestock losses.
The Paris Agreement, reached at COP21 in 2015, commits governments to collectively work together to hold global temperatures below 2°C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit this increase to 1.5°C. Delivering this promise requires unprecedented transition in energy systems that will expand access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy services.
Although Kenya has ratified its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) which features renewable energy resources, among many other mitigation and adaptation goals, its current energy systems are unsustainable on many accounts of social, economic and environmental scenario.
Despite additional investment in renewable energy mix, the pace of transition to newer, cleaner energy systems is not sufficient to achieve the targets embedded in Nationally Determined Contribution, Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 7 on affordable and clean energy, and SDG 13 on climate action) and the Paris Agreement. Accelerating the transition to resilient futures and low carbon energy would require significant shifts not only in technology, but in policy reforms, and the behaviour of end-users.
Climate change, water and energy programme contributes towards addressing policy, legal and technological challenges to climate change mitigation and adaptation; and promoting sustainable development of water and energy resources by providing viable practical options for implementing National Climate Change Action Plan (NCCAP), Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the Paris Agreement.
