Environmental Governance in Kenya

Book excerpt: Kenya is one of about 42 African countries which have enacted framework environmental laws. 14 January 2000 was the Date of Commencement of the Environment Management and Co-ordination Act (EMCA) after its adoption in December 1999 and receipt of Presidential Assent on 6 January 2000. From that date, all sectoral laws were expected to be reviewed or amended to ensure consistency with the requirements of EMCA. Under Section 148 of EMCA: "Any written law, in force immediately before the coming into force of this Act, relating to the management of the environment shall have effect subject to modification as may be necessary to give effect to this Act, and where the provisions of any such law conflict with any provisions of this Act, the provisions of this Act shall prevail". This book is an appraisal of the extent to which this provision has been implemented. It critically analyses environmental law in Kenya with a view to identifying the convergences and divergences between select sectoral laws and EMCA. The ultimate objective is to support internal harmonization of the corpus of environmental law in Kenya.