Climate change governance: An analysis of the climate change legal regime in Kenya

Abstract

Kenya’s climate change legal environment is considered progressive, with the country being one of the first in the African continent to enact robust climate law and policies that guide national and local action. The presence of a comprehensive legal regime is meant to provide an opportunity for the country to coordinate climate change issues in a more structured manner. Despite this, Kenya continues to grapple with challenges presented by climate change, which have increased the country’s vulnerability to biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation and immense impacts on livelihoods and infrastructure in both rural and urban areas. Climate-related disasters and extreme events have plagued the most vulnerable communities, particularly with the most affected being Indigenous People and marginalised local communities. It is against this backdrop that the extent to which procedural mechanisms and the substantive legal frameworks produced needs to be reflected upon, to determine their interaction and feedback with the ongoing climate crisis and their sufficiency to adequately deliver climate justice across various levels of climate change law implementation. As a starting point, this article builds a comprehensive understanding on the existing climate laws in Kenya and explores how this translates to climate resilience building. The coherences, practicalities and implementation dynamics of the legal instruments are analysed to provide a clear picture of how the country responds to international, regional and national expectations and obligations. We argue that the adequacy of climate instruments in Kenya has not satisfactorily translated into climate resilience. Although most of the instruments are informed by sustainability principles for climate justice and resilience building, they still face diverse socio-economic and political dynamics that impede its effective implementation.