EcoBuzz: Balancing Equations

How shameful. Over 85% of Kenyans cannot flick on a switch to light to light their homes, yet Kenya is endowed with renewable energy resources that can secure a low carbon and energy secure electrification programme for its people. But it needs the courage of new policy directions. Right now sunny Kenya's energy policy favours a new highly polluting 300MW coal fired power plant for its needs. Meanwhile, cloudy Europe accounts for 82% of the world's solar power generation. There is something surely amiss in the balancing of this equation. Where policy fails, it must be challenged. Look out for the re-launch of solarnet magazine
(info@solarnet-ea.org). The new edition will focus on renewable energy contributions to the national power supply. It is time.

EcoBuzz: Reclaiming Space

A little green space giving a tired hawker a moment's pause in a torrid day. Pictures - functional shack covers in Laini 7 - that may yet invite a little smile when a train passes through. Poetry engraved near a busy commuter terminus in a large city that exhorts the traveller to "Fare well. Return. Fare well. Return again...". With a country so cruelly divided, cities and towns bring us together, force us to live with one another. Our urban spaces should be functional but they need not be banal. They can be great equalisers despite great inequality. It's time to reclaim these spaces, they are ours. Us. Ordinary people: citizens; artists; poets; visionaries; dreamers and workers.

EcoBuzz: Value at Risk

"What is my Value at Risk as a result of climate change? What can my company do about it in our short, medium and long term planning?" As an individual and a business leader in the private sector, these are the questions you need to ask and integrate into corporate planning, and into disaster and risk management forecasts for your company. Take for example the Aluminium company in Southern Africa that invests in malaria control programmes to monitor shifts in malaria trends as a result of climate change and gets early warnings for the resilience of its future labour force and communities. The time has come to set aside childish things: plan for climate change realities rather than praying they don't exist. http://www.acclimatise.uk.com/resources/reports