Access to Justice for Sustainable Development (A2JSD) Initiative

Access to Justice for Sustainable Development (A2JSD) Initiative Local communities, particularly the poor and marginalized – such as women, children, youth, the elderly, and minority ethnic groups – disproportionately suffer from the impacts of environmental degradation at the local, regional (sub-national), and national levels. In their daily struggles to eke out a living from their God-given natural resource endowments, they face constant violations of fundamental human rights, denial of access to environmental investments, failures to ensure equitable benefit sharing, denial of access to information, denial of opportunities for participation in decision making, and denial of justice from poor decisions of judicial, quasi-judicial and administrative institutions. Weak access to justice in Africa, generally, and Kenya, in particular, is a deeply rooted in demand and supply side constraints of the equation. On the supply side, ordinary courts, judicial and quasi-judicial tribunals are ill-prepared to deal with the complex jurisprudence that sustainable development engenders. Environmental and land law jurisprudence in Kenya is fairly nascent. Many of the judicial officers who preside over land and related disputes are therefore ill-prepared to deal with the complex legal questions that arise in such matters. As regards the demand side, the African citizen is generally acquiescent if not ambivalent towards contestations that require judicial intervention. Part of the reason for this is widespread lack of awareness on land, environmental and related socio-economic and political rights. Other constraints are the prohibitive costs taking up public interest matters, as well commonplace threats of retribution towards public spirit individuals interested in enforcing public rights. Added to these is the fact that environmental law practice is yet to take cognizable roots in Kenya and Africa. Not schooled in the new and emerging frontiers of legal practice such as environmental law and climate change issues, most lawyers are still steeped in traditional areas of commercial, criminal and administrative law. This scenario undermines the pursuit of sustainable development, more so at a time when considerable strides are being made towards improving governance and opening up the democratic space for citizen participation in decision-making. The Access to Justice for Sustainable Development (A2JSD) aims to deal squarely with this challenge. For more Information contact:- Benson Owuor Ochieng Director Institute for Law and Environmental Governance (ILEG) Wood Road, Off Wood Avenue - Kilimani P.O. Box 9561 - 00100 Nairobi Website: www.ilegkenya.org Or Kevin Mugenya …. Projects a) Judicial Training on Land and Environmental Law Project b) Environmental Jurisprudence for Green Justice Project c) Public Interest Environmental Law and Litigation Project