Progress
made in Phase I
All
the project countries achieved remarkable progress in developing
legal texts for their national legislative processes. A notable
case is that all the project countries, except Tanzania, enacted
modern framework environmental laws, in the following order:
Burkina Faso - 1994; Uganda - 1995; Malawi - 1996; Mozambique
- 1997; Sao Tome & Principe - 1997; and Kenya - 1999.
Tanzania's problem on this score may actually have arisen
largely from the faulty "framework law" of 1983.
This must be one of the priority concerns for the project
if Tanzania is to make progress on development and implementation
of modern environmental law.
In addition to the framework environmental law, the project
countries developed the draft texts of sectoral/functional
laws in numbers corresponding to the national abilities
within the country-driven philosophy. The numbers are impressive
in their ways as follows: Burkina Faso - 15; Malawi - 9;
Mozambique - 9; Kenya - 7; Sao Tome and Principe - 5; Tanzania
- 7; Uganda - 7. As a result of the successful and novel
work on development and harmonization of environmental law
on seven selected topics, the East African countries adopted
a Memorandum of Understanding as a prelude to a legally
binding instrument. They have requested the Project to assist
them in developing a Protocol as a legally binding instrument
during the current phase.
The most significant contribution to this process is that
it has created a special awareness of the concept of environmental
law and the participatory culture of environmental legislation.
The notion of conscensus building workshops has caught on
in all the countries and is firmly associated with environmental
legislation. This is closely related to the thematic training
workshops as explained earlier and which were applauded
by all the project countries, even though they pointed out,
and correctly, that relative to the national populations,
only small numbers were reached. They requested for support
in organizing more training to reach a critical mass of
the population.
Observations from Evaluation Exercises
Two
independent evaluation exercises were commissioned for the
project, one midway in 1997 and the other towards the end
of 1998. Both were unanimous that Phase I of the project
was successful; that the project should proceed to Phase
II; that more African countries should be involved in the
new phase; and that additional donors should be sought to
support the extended project. The Dutch Government, as the
sole donors to Phase I and the Steering Committee, concurred
in the recommendations. The Steering Committee also observed
that after significant work has now been done on developing
laws, special attention should be paid to strengthening
and streamlining the institutional mechanism for implementation
of the laws. This prompted the commissioning of the Institutional
Study (2000) which made recommendations on institutional
enhancement in the project countries. A further and detailed
study has been done to appraise implementation of environmental
law in Uganda since the country has been the best performer
in Phase I. These are being taken into account in implementation
of this phase.
The Future
The main focus for the future can be summarized as follows:
·
strengthening and streamlining institutions in order to
promote sustained development and implementation of environmental
law;
·
intensified training for selected cadres in the public sector
and in the civil society on key topics which enhance national
capacity towards sustained development and implementation
of environmental law;
·
developing laws selectively to fill the gaps left in Phase
I and which enhance enforcement of those in place as well
as to develop implementing regulations to the laws in place;
·
where necessary, to review laws developed during Phase I
in order to streamline them against one another;
·
promoting teaching of environmental law in national universities;
·
establishment and strengthening of documentation/resource
centres in order to promote access to information for teaching,
research and access to environmental justice; and
·
intense consultations with national stakeholders to promote
speedy enactment of draft laws where that has not been done;
·
to work with the three East African countries and the Secretariat
of East African Community in development of a sub-regional
Protocol on Environmental Management of Environment, a task
which is an off-shoot of Phase I work on development and
harmonization of environmental law; and
·
such other related activities as may promote development
and harmonization of environmental law or implementation
of multilateral environmental agreements in Africa.
*
NOTE: Phase II will place an emphasis on sharing of responsibilities
between the Project and the host country taking into account
that this is the basis of sustainability. As far as possible,
each country and its relevant institutions, will be required
to demonstrate the extent to which they will set aside human
and financial resources as well as other materials to the
implementation of the project. For instance, establishment
of teaching of environmental law at university level will
require a demonstration of national and other local resources;
training of enforcement officers will require the governments
deployment of such officers; coordination of the project
at national level requires that the government employs properly
qualified officers. This will also include government's
deployment of lawyers in the relevant ministry to ensure
the competent handling of the legal work.
