5.1 General

The process of evolving standards should include the components mentioned below in order to be in conformity with existing international procedure.

(1) Enacting

Policy and regulatory framework and development or revision of laws has been done in Kenya and the air, water and soil pollution sectors were found to be the sectors with critical environmental issues that require qualitative and quantitative standards. The water sector is, however, more advanced than others in that guidelines have already been suggested and what remains is their review and standardisation.

(2) Regulation

Establishment of requirements, standards and economic instruments that will ensure compliance and facilitate enforcement in cases of non- compliance.

(3) Permitting

To ensure that polluters understand their obligations specific environmental conditions which are facility-specific would require licensing and permitting system that ensures that polluters are able to monitor themselves.

(4) Inspect and Monitor
In order to ensure that laws on each sector laws are enforced, it is important to inspect collate and analyse environmental quality data, monitor and check compliance or difficulties in achieving compliance in terms of either
cost effectiveness or availability of technology. This would facilitate decision-making.

(5) Response

Decisions made from collected data must initiate action from the regulators and the regulated community. This may involve corrective enforcement or legal, legal action, penalties, and choosing of better technology in production or better physical planning.

(6) Evaluation and Planning

When data has been collected and policies implemented, the benefits to the environment must be evaluated and counter-actions planned. Follow-up and feed-back to policy makers is essential so that standards can be revised to take changes into consideration. Therefore, standards developed must be constantly reviewed.

The steps outlined above are undoubtedly dynamic processes as a result of changes in natural resources use, ecology, physical development, social and economic needs.