Extreme weather events are ever more exposing the unsustainability of today’s anarchic global capitalism. When disasters strike, they unfailingly follow deep-seated fault lines in society: which is to say, lines of class. Such is the reality in Mathare, an informal settlement on the northeastern outskirts of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. In recent years, it’s paid the price of serial mismanagement and a lack of institutional will to equip low-income neighborhoods to cope with environmental disasters.The floods that hit Kenya early this March killed at least 108 people, displaced tens of thousands of others, and produced unprecedented infrastructural damage. Particularly violent in their first few days, they continued for several weeks. Suffering most were residents of Nairobi’s informal settlements, the so-called “slums”: urban areas lacking permanent housing structures and basic infrastructure, such as rainwater drainage systems, efficient sewage, access to potable water, or public waste disposal. In Mathare alone, there were seven confirmed deaths, not to mention the homes destroyed because of their proximity to the Mathare River — a tributary of the Nairobi River that overflowed during the rains — and the absence of an adequate drainage system.This wasn’t the first time Kenya was unprepared in the face of extreme weather events, which have by now become common during the rainy season from March through April. Yet the political response hasn’t been based on finding lasting solutions but on a logic of discrimination. This structural inadequacy consistently penalizes those living in marginalized areas, while residents of skyscrapers in neighborhoods such as Parklands or the Central Business District are kept safer.We saw this already after the severe flooding of April 2024, which caused nearly three hundred deaths, displaced 55,000 families, and killed 11,000 livestock across Kenya. In response to the desperation of Mathare residents hit hard…
