ICESPS - International Center For Environmental, Social And Policy Studies

Environment Protection and Social Issues Department

ICESPS is committed to clear articulation of its objectives in a professional manner through this department which ensures that:

• Pollution prevention strategies and waste reduction systems which are environmental friendly are in place
• Climate change impacts are recognized and the phenomenon reversed
• Natural resources are conserved
• Land degradation will be minimized through sustainable land use systems
• Energy efficiency technologies embraced.
• International Treaties and Conventions legally interpreted and well implemented for the protection of the environment.
• Existing Rules and Regulations shall be strengthened to ensure that they are enforced to the latter.
• Urban development shall be done according to the plans.
• There will be waste management systems

Governance and Policy Issues Department

Africa is coupled with civil strives and economic hardships which tends to put the governments and the inhabitants not to look at environmental concerns as of any priority due to quest for survival. Communities and large number of people are frequently denied access to justice in the survival and management of their environment. In its commitment to the environmental management and sustainable development, the organization has been established this department with programmes which are now fully operational with the primary focus of provision of legal services.

Environmental Legal Litigation Service -Legal Free Aid Programme; The cost of legal and judicial services is high, a situation which is worsened by the high incidences of poverty and corruption practices. As much as many NGOs have tried to fight for environmental protection, it appears that unlike human rights advocacy whereby legal actions have been successfully undertaken, environmental rights have long been ignored.

ICESPS Governance and Policy Issues department has come up with this programme to address these issues so that the disadvantaged and the affected may realize their environmental rights through free legal representation.

ICESPS Legal Aid Programme Mission; ICESPS realizes that people depend on their environment for survival and for development and unless critical issues affecting their environment negatively addressed, degradation effects will subject majority to poor conditions of living worse than experienced now. The Kenya Government Economic Recovery for Wealth and Employment Creation (ERWEC) articulates the need to maintain the environment and utilize the natural resources sustainably for achieving economic development goals:

• To improve the legal status of the environment.
• To enhance public awareness of environmental issues.
• To increase access to justice for the poor and the disadvantaged.
• To enhance commitment to influence legislation that protects the environment.
• To enhance institutional capacity to monitor government compliance with International Conventions and Treaties and other environmental protection instruments.
• To demonstrate how policy advocacy and grassroots sensitization, enhance people’s ability to protect their environment.
• To strengthen efforts to increase participation of people in entrenching legal order that promotes environmental protection

The activities include among others the following:

• Offering quality legal services to the disadvantaged groups within the critical ecosystems.
• Creating awareness of legal environmental rights and how to claim them.
• Researching, monitoring and reporting on environmental degradation issues.
• Lobbing and advocating for reforms of laws and policies that lead to environmental degradation.
• Undertaking transformative public interest litigation whose impact can lead to amendments of weak environmental protection laws.