HOW ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION IS CONFRONTED IN KENYA
The creation of care is something that was blessed by God Himself from the beginning where the garden was given in charge to Adam on the condition that we may possess the things which God committed to his hands. This meant that man had to be frugal and moderate in the use of what has been entrusted to. Kenyans are called upon to take care of creation so as to curb environmental degradation.
Sorley participated in a workshop on creation and environmental care for a group of Kikuyu people who live in the escarpment of Kenya’s famous Rift valley. He focused on the acute problem of deforestation and how the Christians could respond to such challenges. Once carpeted by a lush cedar and African Olive forest, feeding streams into the valley. Most of this escarpment now lies completely denuded of all crop yields due to soil erosion.
He narrates that, as he was speaking about biblical foundations for creation and care they (the group listening to him), can get involved in honoring Christ through caring properly for the land that he created. An old man raised up his hand, retaliating that “It was the first time that he had heard such teaching,” he proceeded to ask the question: “Why is it that for all these decades the missionaries right here have never told us that God was concerned about how we manage the forests? Why have they just watched this destruction taking place all this time?”
C. SORLEY, “Creation Care and the Great Commission”, in Creation Care and the Gospel, reconsidering the Mission of the Church, Sorley says that this is a question which Christians and churches cannot afford to ignore. This is a clear indication that something has been missing in our efforts to advance the gospel. Little have we considered that taking care of creation is direct contact with God and His people.
This, by all means, is a reached community. People are beginning to question, how comes that we have not been told. A re-awakening call to action and take charge of the environmental care and curb environmental degradation. Many of our people attend Mass and church services on Sunday but this teaching looks like they have not sunk yet, because there is still a continuous cutting of trees unabated. The trees which attract rainfall are al cut, the rivers are dry, the soil erosion at a high rate, not mentioning the high population explosion.
These have become a battle camp during electioneering year, which always becomes a bedrock of tribal clashes due to pasture and fight the few natural resources available. The idea is to go back with the community to re-read the bible from Genesis to reshape the way of rethinking, to reawaken the hope, and take responsibility.
The Kenyan scenario of environmental degradation is taking a toll on forests, grassland, water sources, rainfall and climate patterns, wildlife and bird populations and soils. This is an alarming situation that calls for urgency and sobriety to stop for a moment to see what is happening. We are as Kenyans because of the continuous hardship of life for the people.
This hardship leads to perpetual poverty, hunger heightened by competition among ethnic groups, civil unrests, disease, and even death. Sorley, the in the Bible we are confronted with the reality shared for decay "We know that the whole of creation has been groaning as in pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Rom 8:22).
The speed of decay is so worrying and the groaning seems to louder and louder. In the last ten years ago, the Kenyan Government reported that in just half a generation, the country had lost roughly half of its woodland, and forest cover. While tree planting efforts have increased since that report, the quality of care given to newly planted trees has remained low, and the demand for wood in the form of timber, building poles, and cooking fuel has risen sharply due to rapid growth population as result deforestation continues to be a major problem. (Cf. National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) a State of the Environment Report for Kenya 2003 (Nairobi: NEMA 2004).
This means that the deforestation at its highest, add farming on the slopes will eventually lead to significant soil erosion and a loss of precious water resources. The continuous intense use of arable land over several decades will leave land exhausted and worn out. This is the reality in the Kenyan context. We are entering into what R. Bunch calls African soil fertility crisis. Over the past eight years, care of Creation Kenya (CCK) has been conducting informal crop yield surveys with the older farmers from various locations across the country.
The results according to the survey have been wonderful. For primary food crops like maize and beans, farmers consistently reported that over 25 to 30 years, their yields have dropped substantially. In many parts of the country harvest, today are 30 percent of what they had been before. A 70 percent loss in per acre productivity is clear evidence that the agricultural landscapes of Kenya are groaning. This figure has been consistently confirmed by groups of farmers who have visited (CCK) from different parts of Kenya since 2010.
The workers who watch their yields decline have become discouraged, and they have abandoned farming or simply opted for another livelihood, something else profitable. This has greatly affected the young generation, who have a very pessimistic view of farming. The young men and women have left their villages for towns to make ends meet. Agricultural farms have been abandoned or sold out to prospective buyers, rendering a future generation landless and unengaged, or simply restless.
The young men go to town to improve their lives but they find that what they dreamed of is not that they meet in town lifestyle. No job, no housing, end up in ghettos and a proper timing bomb about to explode. This is evinced during electioneering year when it becomes a business enterprise by politicians to hire youths to cause chaos and political instability in Kenya, every five years or can we offer something better, something that will bring healing, to a groaning creation. A solution that would allow agrarian communities across the world to live (Cf. P. BUNCH, Restoring the Soil, C. SORLEY, “Creation Care and the Great Commission”, in Creation Care and the Gospel, reconsidering the Mission of the Church”.
This is a theme Oborji picks up very passionately when he addresses the African Religion and Healing Churches. He urges that the Church should intensify its evangelizing work for human promotion in Africa; (Cf. F. An OBORJI), Towards Christian Theology of African Religion, p.178, productively on their own farms, carrying out the work of human hands as God established from the beginning when He placed a man into the Garden of Eden.
Agriculture is not only central to Kenyans, but it's the backbone to many countless millions across the world, especially in developing nations. In Africa, small-scale agriculture is the single most common vocation providing a livelihood for the greatest proportion of its people. The foundation of many cultures and people groups are built upon agriculture.
This is what missiological studies have to be engaged in to get real paradigm shift in what we could call Agro-Gospel Evangelization and Ecology (AGEE). An evangelization that has to put the gospel at the heart of agriculture, the fifth gospel of the farming. We plant churches, we are being trained in missiology, scripture is being translated in vernacular, and theology is gaining in its contextualization, many hospitals are being built.
But little attention is being focused on agricultural farming, forestry, and other creation care topics, yet the backbone of many African livelihoods depends on agriculture and livestock farming. It's unfortunate that even in most of our Kenyan seminaries at the national levels and Catholic educational institutions of higher learning, ecological studies are not taken seriously or considered as core subject or units in academic year books.
This is the heart of the challenge that calls for concerted effort to hold the bull of the horn so as to curb the environmental degradation menace in the East and central African regions. The old adage goes "You are either part of the solution or part of the problem.” We can also decide to take a neutral ground that will not be a solution it will only just mean that one supports the status quo.
Most of our Christians we preach to every Sunday are themselves Sunday goers, they simply comply the obligation requirement for it’s a holy day that the Lord has made, but little is being followed up after the priest says, “go in peace the Mass is ended.” The (AGEE) paradigm is created when the priests are able to visit and bless their farms during the weekdays. On Sunday as they get back to church, the response they give during the Eucharistic celebration has meaning: where the response goes as follows. "Priest: Pray my brothers and sisters; that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the Almighty Father. Assembly: May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of his name, for our good and the good of His Church”.
This will avoid the dualistic approach to life realities where spiritual things are put into one box and agricultural things into another box. There is little if any relationship between the two. Not taking care of creation or environment is a sin. This should be the (AGEE) message every Sunday. This is what most Kenyans love to be formed on. The majority of Kenyan brothers and sisters have little or no vision for restoring degraded landscapes.
Most Kenyans population especially the youth grow up knowing that agriculture is for school dropouts or for lazy studies who do not want to study, or simply a punishment tool for indiscipline, where to feel the pain of misbehavior the student will be humiliated to go weed around the school administration block or compound where everyone sees him or her doing the punishment. This, in the long run, creates a negative impact on the student that agriculture is not seen as a professional job.
This kind of treatment is also extended to our minor local seminaries, where the seminarians have no interest in agriculture or farming. Even for the seminarians to help in the parish farm during holidays is seen as an extension of punishment. This is the magnitude of environmental crisis; degradation of environment runs through. It is not something that is a physical but systemic and negative attitude that needs a proper pedagogy of (AGEE) approach and paradigm. There is little passion or none in honoring God in every step of the agricultural process, from planting to harvesting.
There is no commitment to discover and implement the most sustainable practices at all times and at all levels. We have to admit at this point that there is something wrong in our formation programs and understanding of the creation mandate, right from our institutions of higher learning to African agricultural farms and gardens.
The gospel message has not yet sunk properly due to its gospel packaging. It looks as though most theologians have not taken seriously their studies, discussed seriously the creation care needs, and as a result, it is turning out to be a blank page in their ministry or discipleship programs and pastoral work. The time now is to transform, renew our hearts and minds, in accordance with the (Rom 12:12).
If Christ’s creation is groaning, we should do something about it, because when creation groans people groan. Our world view about environmental matters has often been shaped more by science, politics, or by secular economic thinking than by scripture. When a farmer in Kenya doesn't hear biblical teaching in the church that is related to agriculture, it leaves no better option, but to continue doing everything else that endangers the environment than preserve it in this common home. J. Sittler states:
When we turn our attention of the church to a definition of Christian relationship with the natural world, we are not stepping away from the grave and proper theological ideas; we are stepping into right in the middle of them. There is a deeply rooted, genuinely Christian motivation from attention to God's creation, despite the fact that many church people consider ecology to be a secular concern. What does environmental preservation have to do with Jesus Christ and his church? They ask.
They would not be shallow or more wrong. This means that we have to adopt something new in our traditional mode of advancing the gospel. We need to buy a new toolbox, getting back to the laws of ecology as presented by B. Commoner. As we shall explain them in the third chapter. As more environmental concerns gain more attention on drought, deforestation, water scarcity which is almost causing a third world war, and other issues that cause the earth to be sterile and bringing untold pain to many Kenyans.
The Kenyan pastors and churches have to have a combined ecumenical approach to the great commission with efforts to bring healing to creation as well. We need to recall the words of Christ. “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20).
Jesus didn’t command that we go out to make mere converts. He called us to make disciples whose lives would change the world. Discipleship transforms people, communities and the entire nation and in a world that changes over time, that discipleship will need to be applied in fresh new ways to new leitmotivs. This passion for Christ goes hand in hand to include a commitment to care for everything he has made.
This is the time for African theology of creation to be incorporated into discipleship training, seminary formation and pastoral work. Leadership is lacking in these areas and that will call for sacrifices to be made. The Kenyan churches and mission agents with such sound biblical guidance on these issues must stimulate the application of sound scientific and practical solutions and the ability to lead the world by example. P. Brand, the famous medical missionary to India, once said: “I would gladly give up medicine and surgery tomorrow if by so doing I could have some influence on policy with regard to mud and soil.
The world will die from lack of soil and pure water long before it will die of soil and pure water long before it will die from lack of antibiotics or surgical skill and knowledge”. When the land becomes impoverished, people become impoverished as Christians who God has called to bring mercy and justice to the poor. When we integrate creation care as a long-term component of our exports to show mercy to the poor, to restore the productivity of farming, and to replant lost forests cover, the impact will be felt for the generation to come.
Prophet Isaiah demonstrates this clearly by giving us reason to move in: If you do away with the yoke of oppression…and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness…you will be like a well-watered garden like a spring whose water never fail. (Is 58:9-11).
The frontier is wide open, it’s a field ripe for the harvest. This shows that once we embrace our neglected role to care for creation not only will help strengthen the testimony of the church, not only will bring hope to the hungry but will also provide one of the most promising answers to one of the most pressing issues of our time. Integrating creation care into Christian outreach and mission can help us rediscover the beauty of holistic ministry that does not separate the spiritual from physical.
Today, we want priest, sisters, Catholics who are expertise in forestry, fisheries, and sustainable agriculture. We need to be trained appropriately in technology, wildlife conservation, and water resource management, environmental education, and similar fields. And this will raise up missionaries who are system thinkers theologically, scientifically and socially, so that they can effectively demonstrate the fullness of Christ’s love in this troublesome world. As part of the strategy to spread a biblical vision for creation care in East Africa. (CCK) is an organization fully engaged in training workshops and conferences, where they do a review of the pressing environmental or agricultural concerns common to East Africa.
This training is towards practical means of taking action. This includes tree planting and nursery management, farming God's way, beekeeping the use of fireless cookers, spreading the vision through biblically based education in churches and communities. They have a follow-up visit by the (CCK) staff contact with farmers, pastors, women's group, or community leaders, where both biblical and practical aspects of the initial training are reviewed and reinforced while consistent follow-up with those living further afield is difficult.
Many choose to participate in subsequent training courses to improve their knowledge and skills. If we have to restore the Kenyan landscapes, all have to be mobilized to action. The behavior will not change if attitudes are not changed. The people's mindset and attitudes have to be transformed towards creation. The real evidence is only seen through action. The lives of small-scale farmers are being blessed and transformed by the ministry of farming God's Way, putting the farmers towards a commitment to restore their soils and become excellent stewards of their land. Farming should not separate the spiritual from the physical.
In addressing the root causes of environmental degradation that are taking place in Kenya, there should be a paradigm shift in the way farming is being carried on Kenyan landscapes. Farming God's Way (FGW), a track record in healing degraded land and improving crops productivity in Christian communities who want to incorporate the gospel teaching with agriculture, through training the farmers' hearts and minds.
This (AGEE) breathes life and hope back into agrarian communities. Trials in the Rift Valley using (FGW) method, conducted by farmers and at local schools and churches, have produced corn and bean harvest between two and four times larger than adjacent fields farmed in a conventional manner. Similar results have been reported from other parts of the country. In 2011, the corn yield from a farmer named Simon Njoroge almost six times greater than his neighbor's plot, which held the exact same number of corn plants.
This means that FGW speaks for itself. This new process of restoring soil from the destruction with fertilizers. This helps many communities to productively make use of their gardens that they now believe that it was God given. This all has to be geared through a Harambee (pulling together) the efforts of restoring not only the soil but a nation as the national anthem states: Oh God of all creation Bless this our land and nation Just be our shield and defender May we dwell in unity peace and liberty Plenty is found within our borders.
Let one and all rise with hearts both strong and true Service be our earnest endeavor and our homeland of Kenya Heritage of splendor Firm may we stand to defend Let all with one accord in common bond united Build this our nation together and the glory of Kenya The fruit of our labor Fill every heart with thanksgiving. As we venture into the dilemma that is before us in this common home, we are called upon to get back to the drawing board and reconnect the missing dots of the environmental protection and care of creation.
What has been missing in our understanding has to be remodeled and presented with new forms of evangelization and gospel package. Sometimes we have shown little interest in regards to what God has made and have always overlooked the truth that creation care should be an integral part of living fully for Christ. His creation groans, we are degrading into a heap of filth as Pope Francis admonishes us. Most of the people are going through terrible untold stories that are affecting them and their communities in Kenya and the whole globe.
Our world cries out for Christ centered leadership in this field of agro-gospel ecology. Great opportunities stand before us in the missioning and evangelizing believers and non-believers alike. We need the gospel that transforms the hearts and mindset, the gospel that changes behavior and the gospel that brings healing to the broken landscapes. This can only be actualized once we implement a biblical world view of Environmental degradation, offering hope to the poor, a healthier future for the future generation, and the hope that vividly demonstrates the all-encompassing nature of Christ’s love.
As we integrate creation care into the cause of evangelization and pastoral call. We will bring goodness to a world that strives to wrestle with this challenge of environmental degradation in Kenya in its own strength. We cannot afford to leave God out of our lives. We are because of our environment that God has blessed us with. We need to leave it as good as we found it, with a beautiful green cover. This can only be achieved through a collaborative effort with other international family community.
As we battle with environmental degradation this has to help us in one way or another to move towards God when we are able to meet the needs of others. Through others, we learn to care, sensibility, and attention hence becoming environmentally friendly in this common home.
As one H. Njoroge could state thus "I have now learned that we have completely left God of our farms. Your teaching has opened my eyes to realize that we have strayed from God's will and I know God is calling us back to the garden. We claim to have faith but have not been practicing it".
In Kenya there was a campaign all over the country that was "Cut one tree plant two campaign" it became a slogan everywhere, in schools, institutions of learning, government-sponsored advertisements, churches, everyone came on board, agricultural subjects were compulsory in schools, but with time the nation started walking into sleep, it turned into option and even now the option is no longer there. It showed the space, speed and enthusiasm died. This is the challenge we are being confronted with as we look into environmental degradation.
© Don. Joseph Baptist Nyamunga’22
