- Title
- Environmental governance and diplomacy: the twin dilemmas of resource degradation and conflict in Mau Forest, Kenya
- Creator
- Ahmed, Ahmed Omar
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2015
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Environmental degradation and conflict are global dilemmas threatening lives and livelihoods. Despite the imminent dangers they pose to planet Earth, diverse political interests have made effective environmental policymaking and its implementation the most daunting task at all levels—from local, through state to global. In Sub-Saharan Africa, natural resources play a major role in defining the power relations involved in the violent struggles for political leadership. The issues of resource degradation and conflict in the Mau Forest are of central importance for East African communities because of their national, regional, and global implications. Drawing on the case of the Mau forest, this study examines the political complexities in Kenya and the nexus between governance, environmental degradation, and conflict. The study seeks to understand how political dimensions and consequences have failed the environment and natural resources in Kenya, in particular the Mau Forest. While the origins of environmental degradation and conflict can be traced back to colonialism, the subsequent undemocratic political leadership and politics of patronage in Kenya have compounded these problems by undermining the institutions of environmental governance and the existing legal and policy instruments. However, resource degradation and conflict in the Mau Forest have transboundary repercussions. Solutions to the environmental challenges facing the Mau Forest necessarily involve solutions developed through regimes of environmental diplomacy. In this thesis, environmental diplomacy is specifically understood as a governance mechanism, and therefore a key instrument of global environmental governance. Past approaches to environmental diplomacy exhibit a distinctive realist bias that is dominated by a state-centred preoccupation with rapid economic growth. An alternative to state-centred approaches is needed, one that actively promotes democratic and ecological values as cornerstones of regimes of environmental governance. The potential for an ecological democracy approach to governance and how this might enhance environmental governance capacity in Kenya and beyond, frames the analysis developed in this study. It is argued that the principles and practices of ecological democracy have the potential to improve currently existing environmental governance measures. In this context, the study thus examines Kenya’s role in regional and global multilateral environmental diplomacy in relation to Mau Forest. This thesis therefore pursues the argument that the establishment of institutions for collective action such as the Lake Victoria Basin Commission makes it possible to develop collaborative efforts to regulate resource use of the Mau Forest and its related water basins. These efforts point the way towards workable and practical solutions to transboundary resource challenges. The unique contribution of this study is to show that an ecological democracy perspective has the potential to improve current measures of environmental diplomacy. In this way, an ecological democratic approach has the capacity to strengthen transboundary regimes of environmental governance. In turn, this will help reduce the twin problems of resource degradation and conflict.
- Subject
- environment; governance; diplomacy; resource degradation; conflict
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1305774
- Identifier
- uon:21096
- Rights
- Copyright 2015 Ahmed Omar Ahmed
- Language
- eng
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