“In Kenya, years are but a footnote. More than any calendar, life is defined by the rains.”
This was written by Angela Sheldrick in her monthly newsletter for the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a wildlife and conservation protection organization in Kenya. She beautifully and poignantly writes about the impact of the current drought. I quote more of her powerful words below:
“Left to its own devices, nature is a severe but just master. Some years, abundance prevails; others, it withholds its bounty, and the environment goes without. This is the natural order of things, a finely tuned system that has sustained our planet for millions of years…Now, we must contend with a rogue factor: Climate change has shifted the natural order of things, disrupting age-old weather patterns and throwing a finely tuned system into disarray. Rains are failing with increasing regularity, driving soaring temperatures and more frequent droughts.”
So often we are focused on our environmental objectives, the statistics, projections, what we can achieve by 2025, 2030, 2050. We need to do this since we must rely on science and data to save ourselves. Yet today, when we see the simultaneous severe weather patterns in China, Pakistan, the UK, and Kenya, we see that this is happening now, the future is now.
And so we cannot only focus on calendar years; we must remember the rains.
Will this realization finally create the urgency to act?