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Settlement schemes are aimed at settling landless people and those displaced by disasters to support socio-economic and environmental development of a country. Eastern Mau Forest Reserve is an important water catchment that has settlement schemes established, which has led to encroachments and degradation of the catchment. This paper, therefore, assesses the implications of human settlements on Eastern Mau water catchment by examining the trends in land use/cover change and river flows for four decades. Primary data was collected from key informant interviews based on purposive sampling whereas secondary data was derived from Landsat satellite images over a 10-year period and analysed using Maximum Likelihood Function from ArcGIS. Data on river flows from River Njoro was obtained from Water Resources Authority Office in Nakuru. Rainfall and temperature data were obtained from Kenya Meteorological Station in Nakuru. Time series analysis is used to understand the trend in river flows over time while Pearson correlation is used to determine relationship between farmlands and river flows. The results indicate a sharp decline in forest cover by 42.7% and an increase in farmlands by 41%. Dense vegetation and farmlands have an inverse relationship as an increase in farmlands lead to a decrease in forest cover. People have settled beyond the established settlement schemes boundaries leading to encroachment and drying up of some rivers. There is also an increase in rainfall and river flows over the years, with monthly river flows increasing in peak flows and declining during low seasons. There is a positive correlation between farmlands and river flows between 1989 and 2020. There is need for regeneration of encroached areas and defining boundary of Eastern Mau to allow initiatives and interventions that help with sustainable management of the catchment area.

Nyando wetland provides several ecosystem goods and services, i.e., provisioning, cultural, supporting and regulating which are essential for human well-being for making life possible and worth living. Payment for Ecosystem Services presents one key question in current literature on whether local communities are aware of ecosystem services provided by wetlands. This paper contributes to the understanding of the local community’s level of awareness of the ecosystem services provided by Nyando wetland in Kenya as a strategy to improve protection of wetlands. The study is significant as it proposes policy options that can assist conservation authorities and local communities in management of wetlands. A stratified random sampling based on two administrative sub-counties, namely Nyando and Nyakach was employed to collect quantitative data from 394 households using a structured questionnaire. The quantitative data was subjected to descriptive statistics and Chi-square test which were performed in SPSS version 20. The results confirmed that the local community is more conversant with the provisioning ecosystem services (37.7%) compared to the other classes of ecosystem services. Despite the locals being involved in community based natural resource conservation initiatives, majority of the respondents (69%) were not familiar with the concept of Payment for Ecosystem Services. Therefore, there is need to create awareness and capacity building to local communities on the importance of both the wetland ecosystem services and Payment for Ecosystem Services in conservation of wetlands for enhanced community livelihoods. Keywords: Payment for ecosystem services; wetland; conservation; community; livelihood; awareness

Urban heat island is the difference in thermal temperature between rural and urban areas. The urbanization process alters the material type with impervious surfaces being absorbers of incoming radiation during the day and emitting it at night. The research involved the use of time-series satellite imagery from Sentinel, Landsat, ASTER and MODIS for the period 1986, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2011, 2015 and 2017 over the Upper Hill, Nairobi. Morning, afternoon and night land surface temperatures (LST) were calculated for each of these years and analyzed together with the land cover. The mean albedo was calculated to determine the relationship between each land cover and mean LST. The contribution index was calculated to determine whether a land contributed positively or negatively to the mean LST in Upper Hill. Results indicated that built-up land cover had increased from 1986 to 2017 by 0.86% per annum while forest land cover had decreased by 0.99% per annum. Sparse grassland had higher albedo and LST values of 0.81 and 27.9 °C respectively, whereas water had lower albedo and LST values of 0.09 and 25.1 °C. Water had the lowest mean LST during the day but highest mean LST in the afternoon and night in each of the years due to its high thermal capacity. Bare ground tends to have a higher contribution index compared to other land covers, while forest land cover has a negative contribution index, indicating the impact land cover types have on LST and the urban heat island effect.

Climate variability is a global phenomenon that is posing a threat to the infrastructure and agricultural sector. Intense precipitation often results in the deterioration of rural road infrastructure resulting in inaccessibility. Rainfall and temperature data from 1989 to 2019 was obtained from Kenya Meteorological Department. Data on Greenleaf and cost of repairs and maintenances are from selected tea factories managed by Kenya Tea Development Agency. Data on perception is based on a questionnaire survey of 398 randomly selected tea farmers. Results show that climate variability is experienced in Kericho (p < 0.005). There is a varsity variation in mean maximum temperatures F(0.05, 29) ꞊ 5.564 (p ꞊ 0.009) and mean minimum temperature F(29) =8.503 (p ꞊ 0.000). However, the linear regression analysis shows that rainfall has decreased (y ꞊ 2.5476x - 40.778) while the temperature has increased (y ꞊ 0.028x - 0.4473). There is a significant positive correlation between the amount of rainfall and cost of repairs and maintenances for five factories (r ꞊ 0.122, r = 0.046, r = 0.029, r = 0.255) except one (r = -.261, p ꞊ .466). Therefore, the climate has significantly varied from 1989-2019 and heavy rains occur periodically that damage rural tea roads, thus impacting negatively on tea transportation. There is a need, therefore, for heavy investment of emergency funds for repair and maintenance of rural tea roads based on rainfall variability and heavy rain return period pattern.

Urban areas have been cited to be contributors to changing climatic conditions. Conversion of vegetated areas to impervious surfaces causes an alteration of surface temperatures, where impervious surfaces absorb and store incoming radiation during the day, releasing it slowly at night. This causes the urban heat island effect where temperatures in urban areas are higher than rural areas during night. Extreme weather conditions experienced in urban areas include heat waves, intense rainfall resulting to flash floods, destruction of infrastructure facilities. The research involved the use of time-series of stereo-aerial images acquired in 1978, 2000 and 2017. Building footprints were digitized and using digital elevation models, building heights were derived and volumes calculated. Road volumes were calculated using minimum standards of road construction and the total built-up volume was determined. The ground coverage ratio (GCR) and built-up volume densities (BVD) of the built-up areas was calculated from area and volumes from road and building values. Results indicate the mean GCR and BVD in Upper Hill is within the low density range. Mean building height from 1978 to 2017 are in the low-rise range with significant rise in building height and volumes between 1998 and 2017. The 3D built-up intensity expansion rate ranged between −4.28% to 56.80% per annum with a mean of 19.6% per annum. Roads and pavements also have a significant influence on the built-up density and should therefore be considered in planning policies.

The focus of the study is to examine the institutional arrangement for forests governance in Kenya to understand the important design issues that can improve their performance in the delivery of sustainable livelihoods and conserve forests as they have been previously regarded as problematic. The study uses the Delphi technique to assemble information from 46 experts with vast experience in collaborative governance of forests in developing countries. The researchers then developed four questions which were asked across all the study experts. In the second round, all the expert responded to the four open-ended questions and all the qualitative results were analyzed manually by grouping them into interquartile ranges and only those issues that were above the 75th interquartile range were retained. In the subsequent third round of the Delphi technique the experts gave their answers, the responses were collated and returned to each respondent who then was invited to revise his/her estimates or to specify the reasons for remaining outside the consensus. In the fourth and final round, again, the responses were assembled and reported back to the participants to justify his/her position, whether or not he wishes to change his/her position. The results show that the Delphi technique has the potential for studying institutional design for collaborative governance of forests. The study recommends that the important issues identified can be used to help in the formulation of collaborative governance institutional design policies.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine hygiene promotion approaches that were being employed by public primary schools in Dagoretti North and South Sub Counties in Nairobi City County and whether the approaches influenced hygiene behaviors that were practiced by pupils. Methodology: The study applied a descriptive cross-sectional design. Questionnaires were administered to 384 pupils with the aim of collecting data on hygiene knowledge and practices. A questionnaire was also used to collect data on hygiene promotion approaches from 32 school health teachers. Pupils’ demographic data was collected from school head teachers. Five key informant interviews were conducted with Nairobi City County public health and education officers and a staff from a non-governmental organization that was implementing school hygiene activities in Dagoretti South and North Sub Counties. Observation checklists were used to triangulate information on hygiene practices by pupils. Analysis was done using SPSS software. Findings: Results indicate that 95.6% of the pupils practiced hand washing at critical times, 98.7% used the toilet while 85.4% safely disposed solid waste. The study reveals that water, sanitation and hygiene in schools approach is implemented by 31.3% of the school health teachers. There was a significant relationship between school health clubs approach and hand washing at critical times (p=0.04) and proper solid waste disposal (p=0.02). One way analysis of variance established that there is a significant difference among hygiene promotion approaches and pupils hygiene knowledge, F(5, 162) = 6.41, p

Energy poverty affects physical health, well-being, and ability to prosper. A large proportion of Kenyan population lack access to electricity because they are located far from the national grid where it is uneconomical to extend electricity. This paper assesses energy poverty situation in Kirinyaga and reviews its implication on standard of living. Kirinyaga is a rural county with the main economic activity being agriculture and a few agroprocessing factories. Most rural households in Kirinyaga rely on fuel wood to meet their basic energy requirements and lack access to electricity. Tea factories and educational institutions rely on fuel wood to minimize cost of electricity. Kirinyaga residents, therefore, experience energy poverty as indicated by low electricity access and reliance on traditional cooking fuels. Energy poverty in Kirinyaga has negative impact on indicators of standards of living, calorific intake, life expectancy, and literacy levels.

Energy is essential for sustainable development and for improving the socio-economic welfare of a community. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from severe rural energy poverty and minimal access to modern energy services. Adoption of renewable energy technologies is often viewed as a way to alleviate rural energy poverty, but uptake is slow. Socio-economic factors, mainly household income, electricity access, fuels used for cooking, and land tenure, influence adoption of renewable energy technologies. This paper assesses the contribution of small hydropower and biogas technologies in alleviating rural energy poverty in Kirinyaga County, Kenya, where the majority of the population relies on traditional sources of energy. A case study research design was used, with a sample size of 178. Data was collected using a questionnaire survey, the review of project documents, and interviews. Five indicators were used to assess energy poverty. The results indicate medium to low energy poverty and energy stacking; with reliance on traditional sources of energy. Socio-economic factors influence adoption of SHP and biogas. Therefore, adoption of renewable energy technologies does not alleviate rural energy poverty because SHP and biogas are used to supplement rather than replace the use of traditional fuels.

Land speculation accompanies public policy planning in infrastructure planning and development in urban and peri-urban areas. The aim of this paper is to assess how the planning of (Greater) Eastern Bypass in the peri-urban Nairobi led to an increase in speculative activities by examining land subdivision and transfer before and after public notification of the bypass development. Land subdivision data for the period 2005 and 2018 are analysed to establish change in land size, subdivision, transfer and ownership. Findings reveal that normal land speculation occur after public notification; whereas structural speculation occurs during preliminary and design review. Land speculation circumvents subdivision process leading to approval without due process. Infrastructure planning is both a political and institutional process where political class and government bureaucrats influence road alignment. There is therefore need for coupling transport-oriented development planning with overarching land use plan; backed by enforcement.

Sanitation, as described by the World Health Organization (WHO), refers to the provisions of facilities and services for safe disposal of human urine and faeces. On the outset of the 21st century, 40% of the world’s inhabitants do not have access to sanitation facilities and still rely on a bucket, a bush or a backstreet for excretion. Technically, all options that are required to deal with the global sanitation problem seem to have been already developed. However, the challenge remains in selection and implementation of technologies in a way that the desirable outcomes would be resulted. Some decision-making support tools have been developed so far to address this problem by assisting the decision-makers in selecting the appropriate technologies. While decision-making is about considering the likelihood of uncertain events, in most of the existing evaluation approaches the complex task of predicting and evaluating probabilities is reduced to simple judgmental operations. Forinstance, evaluation of sanitation options is often performed based on predicting the outcomes that best represent a sanitation system, with no or little regard to the factors that limit the predictive accuracy. This thesis adopts a new evaluation approach by taking into account the real world examples from executed sanitation facilities and develops a probabilistic evaluation framework in which sanitation options are assessed based on the probabilities that specific outcomes occur in practice. Absolute judgments are replaced by probable assessments, as this approach tries to keep its distance from making the uncertain certain. Although there may be a hidden consensus that quantification of occurrence probabilities for various outcomes of sanitation options is not always possible, some quantification methods are developed and presented in this thesis for all the assessment criteria. Moreover, this thesis does not only focus on making the decisions, but also tries to channel the decisions in a way that the negative outcomes of sanitation facilities would be reduced through the measures that could be taken to improve the performance of sanitation options. By applying the probabilistic evaluation approach for decision-making about sanitation facilities in low-income unplanned slum settlement of Nyalenda in Kisumu, Kenya (based on limited available data about this region in literature) it is indicated that while a sanitation option may be known for fulfilling a certain task by definition, through a probabilistic evaluation it may be revealed that the local conditions are not likely to allow the expected outcome to occur in practice and as a result this option would have no priority among other options. The necessity for monitoring and post-evaluation of implemented sanitation projects in order to have sufficient feedback for improvement of future decisions is also highlighted.

Satellite sewage collection and treatment systems have been independently developed and managed in East African cities outside the centrally planned and sewered areas. A satellite approach is a promising provisioning option parallel to public sewerage for middle- and high-income residential areas, endowed institutions, and government facilities. Although the studied satellite systems offer localized solutions that fit the situation of Kampala, better treatment and management arrangements are needed. Such arrangements do not readily conform to centralized or decentralized sanitation paradigms and likely require flexible mixtures of the two into modernized mixtures. In the case of Kampala, such mixtures entail regulation and control by centralized agencies, development and management by decentralized satellite providers, hybrid treatment process, and separation of waste(water) flows.

Urban slums in East Africa exhibit deplorable sanitary conditions. Despite (inter)national efforts, slum sanitation provision remains inadequate and the projected population growth forecasts a worsening of this crisis. The core of the problem is that available knowledge about the local feasibility of the currently applied sanitary methods is limited. This paper analyses the interface of sanitation policy and technology domains by reviewing the distribution and local characteristics of current centralized and decentralized sanitation options. The findings confirm that conventional, centralized sanitation is an unrealistic solution for application in slums. Simplified sewerage may prove appropriate, but the reported initiatives are in the planning phase only. At present, only decentralized sanitation options are found to be viable in the assessed slums, but their servicing is increasingly neglected by the municipal authorities. The quasi-monopoly of pit latrines implies that improved sanitation technologies are not sufficiently rooted yet. Public toilets are crucial to these slums, especially where land tenure issues prevail. Although the potential of ecological sanitation is currently negligible, novel biocenter initiatives are promising. Municipal authorities are advised to prioritize the implementation of elsewhere successful slum sanitation technologies and to integrate appropriate decentral solutions into their predominantly centralized sanitation schemes.

Urbanization has brought about concentrations of people in densely populated settlements, resulting in the generation of waste water that needs to be disposed off in a hygienic way to avoid the outbreak of diseases. Decisions on what area to sewer, the nature of sewer schemes and treatment works to be used, and the kind of collection and transport system to adopt is often complex and difficult to make. This chapter (re)considers urban sewers and treatment works as the interplay of flows, networks and spaces, and puts forward a conceptual framework for decision-making. It examines current and future sanitation structures in Kampala and Kisumu in terms of sanitation flows, sanitary networks and demands for space. Knowledge of such sanitation structures serves as an input to the assessment of opportunities for so-called Modernized Mixtures of sanitation systems in cities around Lake Victoria.