When you land in Bujumbura, Burundi, you are immediately struck by the verdant landscape. Everything is green. The peaceful city is surrounded by beautiful Lake Tanganyika, the deepest in Africa, with majestic hills to the north. Soon, one discovers that those steep hillsides, the nearly 3,000 or so “collines” of Burundi, are much more than an extraordinary landscape. They are home to a patchwork of communities organized around each colline. In many ways, they represent the beauty but also the pains of the people who live on it and from it. These collines hold the souls of ancestors and families lost during past conflicts, including the 1994 crisis. They tell the country’s story.
But this impressive majestic landscape is threatened by overuse and degraded resources which are further aggravated by climate change. Climate-related disasters—chiefly torrential rains, floods and landslides—have triggered 100% of the forced displacements in 2020 in Burundi according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, underscoring the urgency of action to address compounded risks from rising climate impacts, fragility, and displacement.
Multi-risk vulnerability in Burundi’s colline landscapes
Like many African countries, Burundi is set to bear the brunt of impacts from climate change that it was not responsible for creating. Globally, Burundi has the lowest per capita Greenhouse Gas emissions, ranking last out of 188 countries and contributing only 0.01% to global emissions. Meanwhile, Burundi is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and faces the burden of the impacts of global emissions, ranking 171 out of 181 countries in the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, which summarizes countries’ vulnerability to climate change.
Furthermore, each year, Burundi loses almost 38 million tons of soil and 4% of its gross domestic product (GDP) to land degradation. The coffee sector exemplifies people’s dependence on natural resources for their livelihoods: half of the country’s households live off the sector which brings 90% of the country’s foreign revenue. But in the last 40 years, severe soil erosion led to a two-thirds decrease in coffee production, pushing millions back into poverty.
Burundi’s collines are home to more than 90% of the country’s largely rural population, composed of mostly women and youth, who rely on agriculture and forestry for their livelihoods. They also are critical hubs of multi-risk vulnerability: 75% of court cases are linked to land disputes, and the recent massive return of refugees from neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania has been a source of increased conflict and violence. Poverty and conflict in Burundi are closely linked to resource dependence and climate fragility. Since 2015, the country has experienced unprecedented forced displacement: 131,000 internally-displaced people were counted in 2020, 83% of whom were driven by climate-related disasters and 17% caused by other socio-economic factors, according to the International Organization for Migration Displacement Tracking Matrix.
In Burundi’s context, climate change compounds pre-existing risks through rising rainfall and temperature variability, projected to worsen by 2030-50, with recurrent flooding, landslides and soil erosion already destroying livelihoods and exacerbating poverty. Past extreme weather events including severe floods in 2006 and 2007 and severe droughts between 1999 and 2000 and in 2005 accounted for losses exceeding 5% of the GDP, affecting more than two million Burundians. In addition, river flooding from Lake Tanganyika poses an increasing challenge. Batwa communities are particularly disenfranchised, and at the heart of multi-sector vulnerability, making community-driven development approaches critical in Burundi’s development context.
Climate change is the ultimate threat multiplier in fragile and conflict-affected states such as Burundi. Institutions unprepared to face new environmental and climate risks, high levels of poverty, and agricultural-based economies make them particularly vulnerable.
When you land in Bujumbura, Burundi, you are immediately struck by the verdant landscape. Everything is green. The peaceful city is surrounded by beautiful Lake Tanganyika, the deepest in Africa, with majestic hills to the north. Soon, one discovers that those steep hillsides, the nearly 3,000 or so “collines” of Burundi, are much more than an extraordinary landscape. They are home to a patchwork of communities organized around each colline. In many ways, they represent the beauty but also the pains of the people who live on it and from it. These collines hold the souls of ancestors and families lost during past conflicts, including the 1994 crisis. They tell the country’s story.
But this impressive majestic landscape is threatened by overuse and degraded resources which are further aggravated by climate change. Climate-related disasters—chiefly torrential rains, floods and landslides—have triggered 100% of the forced displacements in 2020 in Burundi according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, underscoring the urgency of action to address compounded risks from rising climate impacts, fragility, and displacement.
Multi-risk vulnerability in Burundi’s colline landscapes
Like many African countries, Burundi is set to bear the brunt of impacts from climate change that it was not responsible for creating. Globally, Burundi has the lowest per capita Greenhouse Gas emissions, ranking last out of 188 countries and contributing only 0.01% to global emissions. Meanwhile, Burundi is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and faces the burden of the impacts of global emissions, ranking 171 out of 181 countries in the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, which summarizes countries’ vulnerability to climate change.
Furthermore, each year, Burundi loses almost 38 million tons of soil and 4% of its gross domestic product (GDP) to land degradation. The coffee sector exemplifies people’s dependence on natural resources for their livelihoods: half of the country’s households live off the sector which brings 90% of the country’s foreign revenue. But in the last 40 years, severe soil erosion led to a two-thirds decrease in coffee production, pushing millions back into poverty.
Burundi’s collines are home to more than 90% of the country’s largely rural population, composed of mostly women and youth, who rely on agriculture and forestry for their livelihoods. They also are critical hubs of multi-risk vulnerability: 75% of court cases are linked to land disputes, and the recent massive return of refugees from neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania has been a source of increased conflict and violence. Poverty and conflict in Burundi are closely linked to resource dependence and climate fragility. Since 2015, the country has experienced unprecedented forced displacement: 131,000 internally-displaced people were counted in 2020, 83% of whom were driven by climate-related disasters and 17% caused by other socio-economic factors, according to the International Organization for Migration Displacement Tracking Matrix.
In Burundi’s context, climate change compounds pre-existing risks through rising rainfall and temperature variability, projected to worsen by 2030-50, with recurrent flooding, landslides and soil erosion already destroying livelihoods and exacerbating poverty. Past extreme weather events including severe floods in 2006 and 2007 and severe droughts between 1999 and 2000 and in 2005 accounted for losses exceeding 5% of the GDP, affecting more than two million Burundians. In addition, river flooding from Lake Tanganyika poses an increasing challenge. Batwa communities are particularly disenfranchised, and at the heart of multi-sector vulnerability, making community-driven development approaches critical in Burundi’s development context.
Climate change is the ultimate threat multiplier in fragile and conflict-affected states such as Burundi. Institutions unprepared to face new environmental and climate risks, high levels of poverty, and agricultural-based economies make them particularly vulnerable.
Figure 1: Scaling up Investment into Burundi’s Colline Landscapes
This is mission possible, but it cannot be done alone. While the World Bank is mobilizing additional resources through its Prevention and Resilience Allocation, it is essential to crowd-in financial and technical partners, including United Nations’ agencies and other climate concessional financing.
Addressing climate risks in fragile states has the potential to enhance resilience and reduce sources of conflict, while generating growth and long-term sustainable development. To be effective, climate investments must recognize the interlinkages between climate and conflict risks. In Burundi as in every other country, these investments must also be rooted in strong political and institutional support to trigger the changes needed to make the “land of 3,000 collines” resilient. - JUERGEN VOEGELE/VERONIQUE KABONGO/ARAME TALL, World Bank
Rastafarians play drums outside the high court in Nairobi, Kenya, during the filing of a petition calling for marijuana decriminalization, May 17, 2021. RNS photo by Fredrick Nzwili
NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — Rastafarians have petitioned the Kenyan high court to decriminalize the use of cannabis, claiming that smoking marijuana is part of their religious practice.
“We Rastafari, who have been stigmatized and misunderstood, we have come here to say in agreement with the United Nations that the use of cannabis for cultural, spiritual and medicinal should be allowed for people who (have) been using it for many years,” Ras Lorjoron, the chairman of the Rastafarian Society of Kenya, told journalists Monday (May 17) outside the court, where the Rastafarians demanded legal use of the plant in their houses and places of worship.
In December, a United Nations commission voted to remove cannabis from its list of deadly drugs, while still calling it harmful.
“Many parts of the world have come to debate and allow the use for spiritual, health and cultural purpose,” Lorjoron added.
Smoking marijuana, say followers of the Rastafarian movement, is their way of connecting with their God, Jah. The “holy herb,” they maintain, heightens their feeling of community and helps them reach a spiritual realm.
According to Lorjoron, the Rastafarians in Kenya are frequent targets of arrest by the police and persecution for the spiritual use of cannabis, especially for sacramental purposes. Many of them end up growing the plant secretly in forests, home compounds or pots inside their homes.
“We urge you to help remove the stigma around cannabis. We want the world to no longer see it as a narcotic, but a medical plant that can help the creation,” said Lorjoron.
In the petition, the group requested changes to sections of the Kenyan Constitution that classify cannabis as a narcotic drug and psychotropic substance. The sections, according to the group, discriminate against the Rastafarian community on the basis of religion.
The origins of Rastafarianism can be traced to the island nation of Jamaica in the Caribbean, but it gained momentum in 1930, when Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa came to power, and some in the movement came to believe Selassie was an incarnation of God. His coronation triggered an exodus to Ethiopia from the Caribbean. Followers of the faith are currently found in most countries in Africa.
The numbers are small in Kenya, where 83% are Christians and 10% are Muslims, according to a 2013 Kenya National Bureau of Statistics study.
Representatives of the movement made their petition at the same court where, in 2019, a judge declared their movement a religion.
Some leaders of more established faiths expressed their doubts. “They are one of those emerging to claim their space,” Roman Catholic Bishop Wilybard Lagho, who heads the Diocese of Malindi, told Religion News Service. “We have a liberal constitution that allows freedom of religion, but I am not sure if they qualify to be a religion.
“I think it’s more of a philosophical question more than a legal one, whether any group can rise up and use a drug as a holy herb, ” added Lagho.
Although there have been some lonely voices in the past calling for decriminalizing the smoking of cannabis in Kenya, the latest move has perturbed Christian and Muslim leaders.
“It would be a big blunder to legalize it, given that millions of Kenyan youth who are unemployed. The stressed youth would smoke to find solace and it would be total mess,” said the Rev. Joachim Omollo Ouko, an Apostle of Jesus priest in the Archdiocese of Kisumu in western Kenya.
Abdallah Kheri, a religious scholar who chairs the Islamic Research and Education Trust, said anything that harms the body is forbidden in Islam.
“Bhang affects the people’s well-being, so it’s forbidden,” said Kheri, using another word for cannabis. “We are still struggling with drug abuses in the country, and if it’s legalized we’ll keep losing generations.” - Fredrick Nzwili, Religion News Service
•Koome was vetted by the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee last Thursday, and has been given a clean bill in her pursuits to succeed Justice David Maraga, who retired last December.
•Speaker Justin Muturi made the call for the sitting in a Gazette notice on Monday.
The Justice and Legal Affairs committee has approved the nomination of Martha Koome for appointment as CJ of Kenya
“This house approves the nomination of Koome for appointment for the CJ position,” the team said.
After the Committee tables the approval report, the whole House then debates the report and votes to uphold the Committee's decision or overturn it.
In the event they approve it, the Speaker then communicates to the President the decision for formal appointment.
Koome was vetted by the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee last Thursday, and was given a clean bill in her pursuits to succeed Justice David Maraga, who retired last December.
Speaker Justin Muturi made the call for the sitting in a Gazette notice on Monday.
The lawmakers held a session in the morning and another in the afternoon.
During her vetting, Koome pledged to restore harmony and end bad blood among the Judiciary, the Executive and Parliament.
Koome had warned corrupt elements in the Judiciary that she will make examples of them to warn others.
The Court of Appeal judge made the comments while being vetted by the National Assembly’s Justice and Legal Affairs Committee. By Nancy Agutu, The Star
Patriots players listen to instructions from assistant coach Bernard Oluoch during the match against Rivers Hoopers on Sunday. The league champions will qualify for the quarterfinals with a win today. Courtesy/Photo New Times
Group A Patriots v GNBC (2pm)
Group C AS Douanes v Ferroviário de Maputo (5:30pm) GSP v Zamalek (9pm)
Patriots Basketball Club will look to qualify for the quarter-finals of the Basketball Africa League (BAL) with a win over Madagascar’s GNBC on Wednesday, May 19.
The 2019/20 league champions will be hoping to build on the form they showcased in their first match of the competition against Nigeria’s Rivers Hoopers.
A win against GNBC will be enough for Patriots to advance the quarter-finals of the lucrative continental competition.
It is not the first time the two teams will be playing against each other. In 2019, Patriots wrapped up their qualification campaign with an emphatic 94-63 victory over GNBC.
Speaking to Times Sport, Dieudonne Ndizeye, Patriots’ small-forward sounded optimistic of winning the match.
“We won our first game, which boosted the confidence in the team and we are confident we can repeat the same performance,” he said.
Ndizeye contributed 13 points in Patriots’ first match where they defeated Rivers Hoopers 83-60 points.
Meanwhile, in Group C, Senegal’s AS Douanes return to action on Wednesday against Mozambique’s Ferroviário de Maputo, while GSP will take on Zamalek. By Damas Sikubwabo, New Times
Several Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) officers are feared dead after a car they were travelling in hit an improvised road bomb.
A statement by Counter Terrorism & National Security Intelligence Service (CTNSIS) indicated that the incident occurred in Lamu County on the morning of Tuesday, May 18.
The officers' vehicle hit the Improvised Explosive Device (IED).that is believed to have been planted by Al Shabaab
"A Kenya Army morning patrol party came into contact with a terrorist RC-IED at Baure area of Lamu, Coastal Kenya. The army lost troops in the incident while a dozen other were injured," read the statement in part.
KDF officers at the scene of the incident in Somalia
TWITTER
The statement was corroborated by Lamu commissioner Irungu Macharia who confirmed that the officers were on a morning patrol, according to Nation.
This comes even as al Shabaab gets on with its offensive against Kenya, especially KDF, after the country vowed that it would continue to fight the militia group in Somalia.
The incident occurred after the KDF vehicle drove over an improvised explosive device (IED).
It happened between Dhobley and Hosingow and is said to be the second attack on KDF in Lower Juba region within 24 hours. The residents confirmed that the truck was badly damaged.
Kenyan troops entered Somalia to launch a military offensive against al-Shabaab, called Operation Linda Nchi (Protect the Country).
The troops are part of the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) which was deployed in 2007 in an effort to fight the al Shabaab militia, a branch of al Qaeda.
KDF officers at an accident scene. TWITTER, By Derrick Okubasu, Kenyans.co.ke
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