Indigenous people experience climate change every day

Last Monday the Climate Change Conference in Paris has started. One of the biggest causes of climate Change is deforestation. The official numbers of CO2 emission varies between 12% en 20%. Wat is deforestation and what are the consequences? Watch this short dutch video.

In South West Kenya you can find Mau Mountains, which contains 25% of Kenyas forest areas. It is one of the biggest compact forest areas in East Africa and millions of Kenyans depend on it for their watersupply. However years of illegal colonisation have destroyed big parts of the woods.

NRC journal of Friday 27 November quotes farmer Alfred Soi: “We have always been warned by the tribal elders not to destroy the wood because it would lead to destruction of life. Why do politicians nowadays forget that? I would like to strike them with a curse”. Years of misrule, mondial as well as local have contributed to icecap melting of Mount Kenya and destruction of the woods  which once were beautiful.
The mountain can’t hold the water any longer because of logging. It spits out a wild, brown flood engulfing the agriculture and economic important Tea Plantations. The Tea Research Institute in Kericho measures a rise in temperature of 0.2 degrees every year. Therefore the climate has become unpredictable. They are confronted with dryness and frost, which they never experienced before. In general you can say the indegenous people in all the world are experiencing the consequences of Climate Change the most, allthough they have nothing to do with the causes. Unnoticed they are struggling to survive in their homelands. But several tribes allready started to investigate where and how to migrate the entire tribe. You can read more about this issue here

The problem in the West is that we only know about Climate Change through information. We do not feel it. We do not experience it. As a result only 7000 people marched last Sunday in the Climate March Amsterdam.

Reading the article above suddenly the consequences come closer. These people are living close to nature and they see, hear and feel it every day.