Natural Hazards and Climate Change in Kenya: Minimizing the Impacts on Vulnerable Communities Through Early Warning Systems - Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change - page 345

mitigate impact from disasters. Current systems are in need of major improvements.
Most developing countries need effective community-based early warning systems
that focus on effi cient dissemination of information. This chapter highlights possible
ways to incorporate vulnerable groups within the EWS system, including
participatory rural appraisal, the creation of community-level prevention and
mitigation groups, improving infrastructure and planning, building links between
climate experts and local populations, improving communication with local actors,
and supporting local development. Some particularly promising solutions are
emerging from Kenya, related to the use of technology for social media and crowd
sourcing data. These new tools have the potential to signifi cantly reduce disaster
risks if they are correctly incorporated into early warning systems.

Keywords Flood • Early Warning • Kenya • Vulnerable Groups • Community •
Participatory Rural Appraisal • Social media

19.1 Context

Natural hazards, whether they are sudden (e.g., fl ash fl oods) or creeping (e.g.,
drought), can generate signifi cant damages: by destroying infrastructure and
adversely affecting the environment, but also by resulting in population displace-
ment and death. Disaster impact intensity is amplifi ed when natural hazards occur
in vulnerable regions. In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) pre-existing socioeconomic
and environmental vulnerabilities, including a degraded environment, poor infra-
structure, high population growth, and inadequate human and economic develop-
ment, contribute to disaster risks and to increased impacts on society.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has defi ned SSA as one
of the most vulnerable regions to climate change (CC) (IPCC 2007 ). Within SSA,
Kenya is particularly sensitive to hydro-meteorological (HM) events and greatly
affected by their impacts. In fact the Overseas Development Institute reports that by
2030, Kenya will be 1 of 11 countries with high numbers of people in poverty, high
multi-hazard exposure, and inadequate capacity to minimize impacts (Shepherd et al.
2013 ). As hydro-meteorological (HM) hazards are likely to become more frequent,
improvements in disaster risk prediction, risk education and awareness, and develop-
ment of preparedness strategies are becoming critical issues. Such risk prevention
measures should be focused on the most vulnerable groups among African societies -
especially women, children, and elderly - who have fewer resources to prepare for,
and respond to, natural hazards (Niaz 2009 ; Otiende 2009 ; Dulo et al. 2010 ).
This chapter briefl y describes linkages between climate change and disasters in
SSA and highlights the impact of disasters on vulnerable groups within communi-
ties. To highlight some of the challenges we provide a case study of the EWS for
fl ood currently in place in Kenya. We then provide recommendations on how future
EWSs could better integrate local communities in risk identifi cation and response
planning and highlight some innovative solutions emerging from Kenya which may
be also be useful elsewhere.