Climate change issues and efforts towards environmental cleanliness and conservation should be mainstreamed in the education system, environmentalists in Embu County have suggested.
The activists suggested that with wanton environmental damage affecting rural and urban places as well as developed and developing countries leading to climate change issues, environmental protection should be a lesson for all learners at young age.
Activists, mainly consisting of leaders of rural environmental Self-Help Groups managing tree nurseries, tree cash crops and participate in community environmental cleanliness campaigns, said children need to be taught basic conservation efforts such as control of plastic dumping.
Mr. Nicholas Njeru Ponda, chairman of Umoja Kiamuringa Self Help Group whose membership comprises members managing private tree nurseries said environmental protection is yet to be fully entrenched in Early Childhood Development and Education (ECDE) where it is needed the most.
“Why are children not taught basics such as environmental cleanliness at home and at school through a clear curriculum, yet this remains the foundation through which the future world’s environmental safety could be created?” wondered Mr. Ponda.
Speaking separately at the launch of forums to tackle climate change started in Mbeere South in Embu County, a cross section of environmentalists, some who grow and distribute close to 2,000 seedlings to farmers, said that if pupils and learners are fully involved in tree planting, the country would be doing better environmentally.
“If children are made aware of the need to rid their homesteads and schools of waste and especially plastics, campaigns to fight climate change will succeed,” Godfrey Kivuti, an environmentalist said.
He said that while some schools have succeeded in ensuring collection of plastics within the precincts of their schools, plastic waste continues to be seen outside schools along the roads and sometimes within homesteads.
The environmental enthusiast known in Kiamuringa and Kianjiru areas has in the past decade become an environmental hero for offering seedlings to friends, contribution during church services and as gifts to couples during wedding ceremonies.
Mr. Ponda noted that the formation of lobbies such as the Collective Extended Producer Responsibility to ensure manufacturers joined producer responsibility stakeholders had failed with little being done by environmental damaging firms away from Nairobi.
He added that top milk firms such as Tuzo, Brookside, KCC and Mt Kenya remained some of the worst contributors to dumping of waste plastic across the country even after the government banned plastics.
The milk firms were followed by manufacturers of salt and various types of sweets and Supermarkets which used plastic bags to pack bread and sugar, said Mr. Ponda.
Ponda suggested that firms using plastics to pack their products should launch campaigns with primary schools to encourage to collect such bags for reuse to grow seedlings at school level and be rewarded for environmental protection efforts.
By Robert Nyagah
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