This week Edwin Ndeke @edwinoblak will share his series on recent flooding in Kenya:
Edwin writes: In March all through to May Kenya saw some of its most catastrophic weather for years. Torrential rains caused devastating floods, at least 228 people died, thousands were displaced and nearly 2,000 schools were affected.
Poorer communities were disproportionately affected. Mathare , with roughly 70,000 residents, is just one part of the densely populated “informal settlement” in Nairobi, and people are still reeling from the impact of the flood.
Unplanned or illegal housing developments that obstruct the flow of water, settlements on riverbanks, and poor drainage systems worsened flood impacts
Because About 70% of Nairobi’s residents live in informal settlements, which occupy about 5% of the city’s land. Congested living conditions push the poorest residents to the margins of the settlement, where they are most vulnerable.
These photos paint a picture of how important it his to fight climate change & effects it has to humans.
Captions:
1. Jane Kalekye at the door of her flooded house in the Mathare Slums on 01/05/2024 as the East african country experiences heavy long rains in Nairobi, Kenya
2. Jane Kalekye stands opposite her flooded house in Mathare Slums on 01/05/2024,Nairobi, Kenya as the country experiences heavy long rains.
3. Jane Kalekye and her son, Francis ochieng,help their neighbour remove a sofa that has blocked her house in Mathare Slums on 01/05/2024, Nairobi, Kenya as the country experiences heavy long rains.
#climatechange #globalwarming #climatecrisis #Kenya #Africa #eastafrica #flooding #torrentialrain #rain #poverty #informalsettlements
The £41m funding boost for a Thames heat pipeline marks a significant shift in sustainable construction, moving decarbonising the built environment from policy ambition to practical green infrastructure. Capturing surplus industrial heat for up to 650,000 London homes strengthens the case for energy-efficient buildings, low carbon design and sustainable urban development at district scale. Rising household energy bills make heat networks an economic necessity as much as a net zero carbon priority.
A UN-backed taskforce has proposed measures to attract more capital into climate adaptation and resilience, reinforcing the need to treat environmental sustainability in construction as an investment issue rather than a compliance cost. Heat stress, drought, flooding and grid pressure now affect insurance, asset values, planning risk and construction programmes. Developers and lenders are being pushed towards whole life carbon, life cycle cost and building lifecycle performance as core measures of long-term value.
Materials remain a critical weakness. UK trials on bio-based, biodegradable and compostable products show that innovation in green building materials, renewable building materials and low carbon construction materials must be matched by recycling systems capable of processing them. The findings strengthen the case for lifecycle assessment, sustainable material specification, environmental product declarations (EPDs), resource efficiency in construction and clear end-of-life reuse in construction. Without stronger circular economy infrastructure, embodied carbon in materials and the wider carbon footprint of construction will remain difficult to reduce.
Industrialised construction faces the same systems challenge. Factories, standards, logistics, procurement and dependable demand must mature together if modern methods are to support low-impact construction, eco-friendly construction and carbon neutral construction at scale. Circular economy in construction depends on circular construction strategies, not isolated green building products.
The direction for sustainable building design is clear: net zero carbon buildings require whole life carbon assessment, net zero whole life carbon targets and credible evidence on embodied carbon. BREEAM, BREEAM v7, eco-design for buildings and sustainable architecture are becoming more important as clients seek measurable carbon footprint reduction across design, construction, operation and reuse. Sustainable design is no longer defined by individual products, but by integrated networks that reduce the environmental impact of construction across the full building lifecycle.
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