Climate change is often discussed in terms that feel far removed from daily life in Donholm or Embakasi East. In practice, its effects are already local: rainfall that arrives in shorter, more intense bursts, longer dry spells between them, and drainage systems that weren't designed for either extreme.
How the effects show up locally
Some of what we do connects directly to this shift, even when it isn't labelled as climate work explicitly. Tree cover reduces local surface temperatures and slows storm runoff, giving drainage infrastructure more time to cope with a sudden downpour rather than being overwhelmed within minutes. Clearing riparian land of waste keeps drainage channels functioning during heavy rain instead of backing up into surrounding streets, a problem we've seen firsthand at several of our clean-up sites where blocked channels had turned a heavy rain into localised flooding.
Longer dry spells, meanwhile, put more pressure on households already managing inconsistent water supply, which is part of why our water conservation training has become one of the more consistently requested sessions at our monthly household meetings.
Why local, small-scale action still matters
We run periodic awareness sessions explaining this link plainly, because residents are far more likely to support tree planting or clean-up work when they understand it as flood and heat mitigation, not simply as tidiness. Framing matters here: a clean-up sold purely as civic pride motivates fewer people to return the following quarter than one explained as directly reducing the flooding risk outside their own gate.
Small, local action is still the most direct lever most residents have on a problem this large. A neighbourhood can't change national emissions policy, but it can plant trees that measurably cool a specific street and clear drainage channels that measurably reduce flooding on that same street, and those are the changes we focus our education sessions around.