The Kenyan government has over the years encouraged citizens to plant trees to revive forest cover that has been lost over the years with minimal success.
The effects of climate change have far-reaching consequences regarding the onset of harsh weather and climate conditions like unpredictable weather patterns that affect farming. Environmental rights have become key to the survival and quality of humanity on planet Earth.
Perhaps this is where we need more debate around the bottom-up approach by individuals as well as devolved units and other sector players at the national government towards protecting our environment for sustainable development.
As a nation, we should move away from recognising the World Environment Day to taking relevant actions that give meaning to every effort towards mitigating climate change. Our commitment to reviving tree planting is strategic to achieve remarkable forest cover.
Kenyans and key players in environmental protection should take advantage of the long and shorter rain seasons to plant as many trees as possible. Strict measures should also be enforced against illegal harvesting of trees in the few existing forests and our farmlands.
Development can only be said to be good if it outlives the current generation for posterity. The need to protect the environment is a matter of urgency deserving attention now than before.
The devolved governments hold sway over the efforts towards protecting environmental degradation. In the absence of heightened efforts to protect the environment, different parts of the country will continue to experience harsh weather and climatic conditions leading to low food production for animals and human beings.
One of the objectives of devolved units is to promote social and economic development and the provision of proximate, easily accessible services throughout Kenya. This puts devolved units at the centre of driving grassroots development across all fields, including sustaining our environments.
One of the striking features of the Kenyan constitution is the entrenching of Article 42 which provides for the right to a clean and healthy environment as a human right.
Laws, policy documents and institutional frameworks have been developed to address the challenge of environmental degradation. With a transformative constitution that ties environmental rights to human rights, Kenya should lead the pack in protecting the environment.
Devolved units should ensure that their sector plans mainstream efforts geared towards environmental protection in the interest of the public.
Public resources, like Uhuru Park, forests and rivers wouldn’t have survived indiscriminate destruction fuelled by the greedy political class without the heroic efforts of yesteryear environmental protection advocates led by the Prof Wangari Maathai, among others.
For a long time, Kenya lacked a harmonious legal framework that could unequivocally provide for environmental governance. Instead, it placed reliance on weak sectoral laws that were designed to tackle specific aspects of the environment until the enactment of the Environmental Management and Coordination Act.
The sectoral laws also failed to address the rights of individuals to a clean, decent, satisfactory and healthy environment. The laws also failed to address the role of the state in environmental conservation and protection and the right of the environment to be protected for its intrinsic and ecological worth.
Citizen’s Duties and Rights
It is time to actualise efforts to a clean and healthy environment. Protecting our farms, rivers, markets and towns is not a preserve of the government. It is incumbent upon every citizen to have their actions counted in the struggle to keep the environment clean.
One of the significance of entrenching the right to a clean and healthy environment as a human right has come to mean that every citizen has a duty and a right to protect the environment from degradation.
Citizens can now successfully move to court to stop any activities that negatively affect the state of the environment or are likely to degrade their environment. This window was unavailable under the repealed sectoral laws.
We all must continue rolling the wheels of sound environmental management practices across the two levels of government. Devolved units should mobilise ordinary citizens through various community-based platforms to spur efforts towards sustaining a good environment.
Countries like Rwanda have made great strides in achieving a clean and healthy environment by inculcating a culture of maintaining a clean environment through citizen participation in public cleaning exercises. It is laughable if you tried to juxtapose Rwandese love for a clean environment and our state of affairs in our major towns and cities.
Let us walk the talk of environmental protection if we are to achieve meaningful results in a healthy environment.
Lawyer and public policy consultant
