Kenya’s Turkana region may currently be best known for the discovery in 1984 of the most complete skeleton of early man, or the grim final scenes of John Le Carrér’s novel, The Constant Gardener. But soon its greatest claim to fame may become the location of the largest wind farm in sub-Saharan Africa, initially generating 300 MW of electricity and saving Kenya some 120 million Euros a year in reduced oil imports, while helping to cut gases causing climate change.

The go ahead for the wind farm, which harnesses a special atmospheric phenomenon that guarantees near constant wind, has been given. Construction is likely to begin before year’s end. It may be hard for many a Kenyan, stuck in traffic in downtown Nairobi, breathing in exhaust fumes or faced with yet another cycle of drought and floods, to imagine that their country is actually emerging as a pioneer of a Green Economy.

But that is what is starting to happen. This progress should make this year’s World Environment Day, celebrated annually on 5 June, a cause for quiet optimism, rather than a cause for concern over environmental degradation and decline. Closer to Nairobi, the geothermal power generation at Naivasha is taking off. The site has for decades housed a small geothermal plant, harvesting the steam from the hot rocks of the Rift Valley to turn turbines. Today, it is abuzz with engineers and investors from China to Iceland, as well as the United States.

These countries all want to be part of the massive expansion currently underway, which aims to add over a 1,000 MW. UNEP’s role was to assist the government’s Geothermal Development Corporation with new kinds of drilling techniques. Put bluntly, you can lose your shirt if drilling fails to yield hot steam, which was the risk under the old drilling system. Kenya’s national parks and abundant wildlife have for decades been a magnet for tourists and scientists. But some of the country’s great natural assets have, for a range of reasons, been faring badly.

The Mau forest complex was a case in point—by various estimates, a quarter of this important ecosystem has been cleared. But that decline is now being reversed with support from overseas donors, such as the European Commission and Kenya’s private sector. The tipping point in favour of restoration rather than degradation came a couple of years ago. UNEP worked with the Kenyan government to carry out a unique assessment of the value of the Mau to the national economy. The answer: US $1.5 billion in terms of the natural services the forest generates—services such as supplying water to 1) major river systems that feed the Maasai Mara, and 2) Lake Nakuru to increase moisture levels that are vital for the health of the local tea industry. WED 2012 comes just a few weeks in advance of the Rio+20 Summit in Brazil—two decades after the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, and four decades after a UN Conference in Stockholm, Sweden, that led to the establishment of UNEP in Kenya and marked the first World Environment Day.

Rio+20 needs to be a moment in time when the world shifts into a sustainability gear—the Green Economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication is one of the Summit’s major themes for achieving this WED 2012 echoes this under the theme of Green Economy—Does It Include You? Kenya is among a group of nations demonstrating by thought, words and, more importantly, deeds that a Green Economy transformation is not a pipe dream or the Emperor’s new green clothes, but a running possibility for the globe’s seven billion people, rising to over nine billion by 2050. Though it may not look like it, Kenyans are part of an experiment in a future that just may work if we want to grow and generate jobs, but in a way that keeps humanity’s footprint within planetary boundaries.