Commercial greed - A threat to Kenya’s bed of roses

Roses are likely to be in great demand today as it is St Valentine’s Day, but we should give a thought to where the roses are coming from and the possible impact on society.

Most of the roses are from Kenya, where some 70% of the blooming and booming flower trade is located around Lake Naivasha, the country’s second largest freshwater lake.

The area has long been famous for its wildlife, as it was the setting for the late Joy Adamson’s famous book and award-winning film, Born Free. In recent years the areas has undergone a massive increase in population without the proper infrastructure to service that population explosion.

There are 58 flower farms in the areas, some ranging from less than 10 acres to over 400 acres in size. They are pumping more than 82 million litres of water a day to the flowers destined mainly for the European market.

Flowers are Kenya’s next biggest export after tea and coffee. It is a huge money earner, which is all the more important in view of the current political upheaval in the country.

Last year the flower industry was worth €255 million to Kenya’s economy, but that was threatened by the recent violence. European consumers were encouraged to buy Kenyan flowers to help the country’s endangered economy.

The price of the flowers in this country is an imaginable multiple of the €1.85 an hour that Kenyan workers are paid. Yet even that is more than twice the average wage of other workers in the country. But there is a huge ecological price.

The water in the lake is being seriously polluted as a result of human and animal waste, along with high concentrates of nitrate and other chemicals being dumped into the rivers feeding the lake. At the current rate of such pollution, Lake Naivasha could be reduced to a putrid cesspool.

One of the most scenic areas of the world — teeming with fascinating forms of animal life including buffaloes giraffes, lions, hippos and monkeys, as well as more than 400 species of exotic birds — is being endangered. These are threatened by commercial greed.

Society should insist that precautions be taken to prevent the destruction of this environment.

Otherwise those jobs will not last. It will not just be those people living around Lake Naivasha who will suffer.

They will suffer most, but everyone will ultimately be the poorer as a consequence of the likely ecological disaster.

We should all be mindful that the beauty epitomised by the roses is being threatened by commercial greed.