In this rainy season, KenGen will complain of overflowing dams but a month or
so into the dry season, they will run low on water and KPLC will have to ration
electricity. Budalangi will flood every year in April but the community will wait
to lose lives or property before they can move to higher ground. Many
households will watch the rain water runoff instead of harvesting it for
consumption, only to buy water a few days later. Food will rot in Rift valley while people are dying of hunger in
Northern Kenya.
What is it that makes
intelligent human beings keep running into the same problems year in year out
and not do anything about it? Why don’t we ever prepare for eventualities in
our lives, even the most obvious ones?
The argument goes
that it is hard to spend time thinking about the future when the world around
us seems to be falling apart. In the
midst of overwhelming concerns like scarce resources, rising cost of living,
political upheaval, terrorist scares, ethnic divisions, family challenges or
joblessness, it is more burdensome than beneficial to add to the already long
list, especially speculative problems. What really matters is fixing the here-and-now,
right? KenGen can therefore plan to build more dams so that it harvests more
rain water for KPLC to provide uninterrupted electricity supply to its
customers for longer periods.
While this solution sounds logical and viable, it
is short term and irrelevant in the long term. Why do I say so?
If Kenya is to become a middle income country as
aspired by vision 2030, providing reliable and efficient power supply for all
Kenyans both for domestic and industrial use is going to be critical. With an
increasing population, a declining water table and drastically changing weather
patterns, hydro power is certainly not going to be a sustainable source of energy.
Alternative sources like solar and wind might be more strategic options in a
more globally warm environment.
Through policy interventions and incentives, mass
installations of solar panels in all new buildings and wind masts in
appropriate locations today, would be a strategic decision that would provide a
more reliable source of energy and result in reduced expenditure on this
essential commodity in the long run. Besides, KPLC definitely needs to style up!
Some competition would be good in forcing it to be a more efficient service provider.
Structured thinking about the future means putting
both the problems we face today and the solutions we might try in a larger
context. One is able to expand their understanding of the extent
of the situation and see how different issues are interconnected. As we have
seen time and again, it is all too easy for actions that seem reflexively correct
in the short term to lead to far greater crises in the long term. Thinking
constructively about the future allows us to begin to see the path we would
need to take in order to get to a better world or, at the minimum, the paths we
need to avoid in order to forestall a worsening of the situation. By thinking
about the future, we can clarify the responsibility and capacity we have to
create a tomorrow worth living in. It is the reasonable and responsible thing
to do. Ignoring the future is undermining the present.
