Dancliff Mbura is the advocacy and communications manager at Action Against Hunger Kenya. He works to influence policy and resource allocation and is an expert on multisectoral nutrition interventions.
Just four years since the last devastating drought, when five consecutive rainy seasons failed, 3.3 million people in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid counties are facing acute hunger as yet another drought crisis deepens. It is visible everywhere – in the parched riverbeds, weakened animals, and the children, who are too quiet.
Six months ago, the number of people facing acute hunger was 1.8 million. If nothing changes, by August, it will climb to 3.7 million, underscoring the need for urgent aid.
We know the answers. Cash transfers allow families to purchase food in markets that are still functioning. Mobile health and nutrition outreach teams must meet communities where they are, not where facilities happen to be located, which could make them inaccessible. Emergency water provision is essential.
But the resources are not there to address the growing needs. A coalition of humanitarian organisations working across Kenya’s drought-hit regions with the government has estimated the drought response would cost more than 30 billion Kenyan shillings ($232 million). Kenya’s government has released just 6 billion shillings so far.
Reducing the damage
Beyond the immediate response, however, we need to invest in systems that reduce the damage of future drought cycles in this climate-vulnerable region.
Kenya has systems that support the generation of early-warning systems, such as the National Drought Management Authority’s monthly county and national early-warning bulletins with detailed early-warning data. What we need is a means to ensure that information reaches communities in time for them to act on it and make sure they have the resources they need to do that.
One approach could be the establishment of village-level climate change and disaster hubs. These hubs would provide communities with simplified, actionable information, sometimes via dashboards on weather patterns and forecasts, and support them in generating locally relevant, cost-effective early actions.
By engaging communities in this process, the government and development partners can complement these efforts with additional resources where needed. This approach fosters community ownership while simultaneously enhancing resilience to climate-related risks.
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With better technology, including AI-assisted climate modeling, we can generate precise early-warning information. When shared in a timely manner with communities and accompanied by support for early or anticipatory actions, this can help build resilience to frequent droughts and other crises.
For example, with access to early-warning information, vulnerable communities could store water ahead of droughts, switch to short-maturity crops when reduced rainfall is forecast, and move livestock and food stocks to higher ground before floods hit. They could also apply preventative treatments to protect crops and animals from pest or disease outbreaks, and make smarter market decisions, such as selling livestock early before prices drop, to safeguard their income.
Different in scale
I have spent 15 years working on humanitarian response in Kenya. I have seen drought cycles come and go. But what is happening right now across our arid and semi-arid lands – the ASAL counties that cover nearly 80% of the country – is different in scale and in the depth of suffering it is causing.
The October-December 2025 short rains delivered only 30 to 60% of the long-term average, making it one of the driest seasons since 1981. In some areas, rainfall failed almost entirely. More than 90% of open water sources have dried up in most parts of ASAL counties. Families are walking up to 20 km (12 miles) or more just to find water.
Now, as we approach Kenya’s more reliable rainy season from March to May, projections are well below average across the hardest-hit northern counties, and we may be heading into a fourth consecutive poor season. For communities who have already exhausted every coping mechanism they have, another failed season could be catastrophic.
More than 810,000 children between the ages of six months and five years are acutely malnourished. Nearly 117,000 pregnant and breastfeeding mothers are also acutely malnourished. The cycle of nutrition that healthy communities depend on is breaking down.
And yet approximately half of severe acute malnutrition cases are going untreated. Only 24% of the nutrition and health outreach sites mapped across the arid and semi-arid counties are currently functioning.
Impossible choices
The economic devastation compounds everything. Livestock is the backbone of life in these pastoral lands. But in Marsabit county alone, more than 50,000 sheep and goats have died. Mandera has lost nearly 30,000 animals. Milk production has plummeted by 55%. As animals grow weaker, families receive less and less when they sell them. Livelihoods are collapsing in slow motion, and families are running out of options.
That can lead to desperate decisions: more daughters are married off early in exchange for dowry like livestock, a practice that rises sharply in times of crisis. Girls are subjected to female genital mutilation so they can be considered ready for marriage. Children drop out of school as families are forced to move in search of better land.
Every week that passes without a scaled-up response is a week in which children go hungry, animals die, and families make impossible choices. We are at a point where, if we do not act, lives will be lost – preventably.
Not because we lacked the knowledge, not because we lacked the warning, but because we were not able to move fast enough.
The post We must invest in early-warning systems to tackle crises like Kenya’s drought appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/03/10/we-must-invest-in-early-warning-systems-to-tackle-crises-like-kenyas-drought/
Climate Change
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Climate Change
Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
Countries attending a first-of-its-kind fossil-fuel summit have been asked to consider “action recommendations” such as “halting all new fossil-fuel expansion” and “reject[ing] gas as a bridging fuel”, according to a preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief.
Around 50 nations will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia from 24-29 April to debate ways to “transition away” from fossil fuels, in the face of worsening climate change and sky-high oil prices.
The talks come after a large group of nations campaigned for, but ultimately failed, to get all countries to formally agree to a “roadmap” away from fossil fuels at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November.
The nations gathering in Santa Marta for the summit co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, call themselves the “coalition of the willing”.
Ahead of country officials arriving in Santa Marta, a global group of academics will gather in the city this week to present and discuss the latest scientific evidence on fossil-fuel phaseout, which will then inform debate among policymakers.
A preliminary scientific “synthesis report” circulated to governments attending the talks and seen by Carbon Brief offers 12 “action insights” for countries to consider, along with a wide range of “action recommendations”.
These recommendations range from “phase out subsidies on fossil-fuel production and consumption” to “kick-start a forum to develop a legal framework to ban fossil-fuel advertisements”.
‘Rapid’ assessment
The preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief – titled, “Action insights for the Santa Marta process” – is the result of some rapid work by an “ad-hoc” group of around 24 scientists.
It is designed to present governments attending the talks with concrete and actionable recommendations for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
The preliminary version, which includes recommendations such as “halting all new fossil fuel expansion”, has already been circulated to governments, with a view that this could help them to prepare for the talks in advance.
It will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the academic segment of the Santa Marta talks, before a final version is made public towards the end of April, Carbon Brief understands.
The process to produce the report began shortly after the conclusion of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November, explains its lead author, Dr Friedrich Bohn, a research scientist and co-founder of the Earth Resilience Institute in Germany. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When [Brazil] announced there would be a Santa Marta conference led by Colombia and the Netherlands, I was sitting listening with a small group of scientists. We thought: ‘This is great news, but it should be supported by scientific expertise.’”
One of the members of Bohn’s group had a pre-existing relationship with the Colombian government, allowing a dialogue to quickly be established, he continues:
“In the beginning, the idea was to just write a peer-reviewed paper. But, because of this close connection to the Colombian government and some feedback from them, the synthesis paper evolved.”
The report came out of a “very rapidly evolved process” that relied on the “goodwill” and “enthusiasm” of the academics involved, adds coordinating author Prof Frank Jotzo, a professor of climate change economics at Australian National University. (Jotzo is a former Carbon Brief contributing editor.) He tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s an attempt to get broad coverage on relevant topics from researchers with good expertise and reputation.”
The group of 24 scientists involved spent around two months compiling the “action insights” for the report, drawing on their expertise and the latest available research, says Jotzo.
Given the rapid nature of the report, it does not aim to be “completist”, has not been externally reviewed and did not follow a stringent process for author selection comparable to that used by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, he adds.
The contributors to the report currently skew to the global north and include more men than women, adds Bohn.
‘Direct guidance’
In a departure from IPCC reports, the preliminary Santa Marta synthesis report offers “very direct guidance to action”, says Jotzo.
The report lists 12 “action insights”, each with three “action recommendations”. (The list was cut down from a shortlist of about 40-50 insights, Carbon Brief understands.)
One of the most striking in the draft is “action insight 5”, which says:
“Take immediate measures to prevent future emissions. Ban new fossil infrastructure, mandate deep methane cuts, accelerate electrification and inscribe fossil-fuel phase-down targets in NDCs [nationally determined contributions] and clean-energy pathways support to low and middle income countries (LMICs).”
The accompanying three “action recommendations” include “halting all new fossil-fuel extraction and infrastructure projects ahead of a final investment decision”, “implementing deep, legally binding methane cuts in the energy sector” and “inscrib[ing] targets for fossil-fuel phase down, electrification and green exports in NDCs”.
(The draft report includes multiple references to “phasing out” and “phasing down” fossil fuels, rather than the “transition away from fossil fuels” language that was, ultimately, agreed by countries at the COP28 UN climate talks in Dubai in 2023.)
Another action insight says “public support for climate action is broadly underestimated and undermined by interest groups, but it can be strengthened by debunking greenwashing narratives”.
One recommendation for this insight is that nations “reject natural gas as a bridging technology and CCS [carbon capture and storage] techniques as scalable compensation”.
In a letter introducing the report to governments and civil society, the scientists note that making direct recommendations is a “challenge for our community”, but added:
“However, in the spirit of a constructive collaboration between science and policymaking, we allowed ourselves to identify some potential courses of action that our community would recommend for each particular issue – and we invite you to weigh these against your own circumstances and pick up whatever seems most useful for you and your colleagues.”
The prescriptiveness of the recommendations – something strictly prohibited in IPCC reports – was an explicit request from the Colombian government, Bohn says:
“The idea of actionable recommendations was introduced by the Colombian government.
“There was some discussion within the team about this. It’s a tricky area when you leave science and move to consultation. Therefore, we agreed, in the end, to call them ‘actionable recommendations’ and to make them as precise as possible, from the scientific perspective.”
Jotzo, a veteran of the IPCC process, tells Carbon Brief that it was “very liberating” to work on a report with a “free-form process”:
“The bulk of policy-related research is very readily deployed to recommendations pointing out what countries could do. The IPCC process, for example, just doesn’t allow that. As far as the summary for policymakers in the IPCC is concerned, it will usually be governments that filter out anything that could be interpreted as a specific recommendation.”
He adds that the hope is that some of the action insights might be reflected in the high-level segment of the Santa Marta conference:
“No one is under any illusions that governments will walk away from the Santa Marta conference and will have made a decision to implement recommendations one, seven and nine – or something like that. But it is a chance to insert directly applicable action points into national and plurilateral policy agendas.”
Colombia calling
The preliminary report will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the “pre-academic segment” of the Santa Marta talks.
This is taking place from 24-26 April, ahead of the “high-level segment” involving ministers and other policymakers from 28-29 April.
The pre-academic segment will also separately see the launch of a new advisory panel on fossil-fuel transition and a scientifically led roadmap for how Colombia can transition away from fossil fuels, Carbon Brief understands.
The high-level segment is expected to be attended by representatives from around 50 countries, including COP31 host Turkey and major oil-and-gas producers such as the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Norway.
Countries expected to attend account for one-third of global fossil-fuel demand and one-fifth of global production, according to the Colombian government.
At the end of the conference, countries are due to release a report featuring a “menu of solutions” for transitioning away from fossil fuels, according to Colombia’s environment minister Irene Vélez Torres.
This report is in turn set to inform a global “roadmap” on transitioning away from fossil fuels being developed by the Brazilian COP30 presidency, which is due to be presented at COP31 in Turkey this November.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency offered to bring forward a “voluntary” fossil-fuel transition “roadmap” outside of the official COP process, after countries failed to formally agree to one during negotiations in Belém.
The post Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
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Woodside’s Browse gas project could make Scott Reef’s unique green turtles extinct.
Woodside’s Browse gas project could delay or prevent the population recovery of the endangered pygmy blue whales that rely on Scott Reef, heightening their extinction risk.
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