No description available.

The search for development that is sustainable often results in the complex challenge of having to reconcile the need for socio-economic activities with protection of the environment. This challenge of integrating such fundamentally important considerations that often contrast, but should be mutually supportive, is necessarily addressed by legal and policy frameworks of the country in question. These could be laws and policies with competence to manage the environment, or to manage socio-economic and political activities that impact the environment. This challenge is profound for developing countries like Kenya that experience higher levels of degradation, poverty and food insecurity. Arguably in this context, while addressing integration involves reconciliation of legal principles for a coherent legal concept of sustainability, it is also a serious matter of survival for millions of people. This raises compelling reasons to ensure that any legal reform measures positively impact how these people make decisions on the socio-economic utilization of land or forestry resources that they have access to. The research aimed to develop a legal and policy framework that will facilitate integration of environmental protection with socio-economic activities during land use decision making, as a mechanism to achieve sustainability. We investigated how a legal/policy framework, founded in the 2010 Constitution, and in environmental and tenure rights laws of Kenya, can conceptually reconcile the right (and duty) respecting a clean environment, with socio-economic rights. The research further analysed how such conceptual reconciliation can impact integration in policies, plans and decision making by sectoral laws and institutions to ensure environmental consideration across sectoral areas. To this end, we have proposed enacting a legal duty requiring tenure rightholders to integrate their socio-economic activities with environmental protection during land use decision making. We further frame mechanisms to guide the attitudes, and decisions of farmers and forest communities in making that transition to sustainable practices.

The search for development that is sustainable often results in the complex challenge of having to reconcile the need for socio-economic activities with protection of the environment. This challenge of integrating such fundamentally important considerations that often contrast, but should be mutually supportive, is necessarily addressed by legal and policy frameworks of the country in question. These could be laws and policies with competence to manage the environment, or to manage socio-economic and political activities that impact the environment. This challenge is profound for developing countries like Kenya that experience higher levels of degradation, poverty and food insecurity. Arguably in this context, while addressing integration involves reconciliation of legal principles for a coherent legal concept of sustainability, it is also a serious matter of survival for millions of people. This raises compelling reasons to ensure that any legal reform measures positively impact how these people make decisions on the socio-economic utilization of land or forestry resources that they have access to. The research aimed to develop a legal and policy framework that will facilitate integration of environmental protection with socio-economic activities during land use decision making, as a mechanism to achieve sustainability. We investigated how a legal/policy framework, founded in the 2010 Constitution, and in environmental and tenure rights laws of Kenya, can conceptually reconcile the right (and duty) respecting a clean environment, with socio-economic rights. The research further analysed how such conceptual reconciliation can impact integration in policies, plans and decision making by sectoral laws and institutions to ensure environmental consideration across sectoral areas. To this end, we have proposed enacting a legal duty requiring tenure rightholders to integrate their socio-economic activities with environmental protection during land use decision making. We further frame mechanisms to guide the attitudes, and decisions of farmers and forest communities in making that transition to sustainable practices.

The search for development that is sustainable often results in the complex challenge of having to reconcile the need for socio-economic activities with protection of the environment. This challenge of integrating such fundamentally important considerations that often contrast, but should be mutually supportive, is necessarily addressed by legal and policy frameworks of the country in question. These could be laws and policies with competence to manage the environment, or to manage socio-economic and political activities that impact the environment. This challenge is profound for developing countries like Kenya that experience higher levels of degradation, poverty and food insecurity. Arguably in this context, while addressing integration involves reconciliation of legal principles for a coherent legal concept of sustainability, it is also a serious matter of survival for millions of people. This raises compelling reasons to ensure that any legal reform measures positively impact how these people make decisions on the socio-economic utilization of land or forestry resources that they have access to. The research aimed to develop a legal and policy framework that will facilitate integration of environmental protection with socio-economic activities during land use decision making, as a mechanism to achieve sustainability. We investigated how a legal/policy framework, founded in the 2010 Constitution, and in environmental and tenure rights laws of Kenya, can conceptually reconcile the right (and duty) respecting a clean environment, with socio-economic rights. The research further analysed how such conceptual reconciliation can impact integration in policies, plans and decision making by sectoral laws and institutions to ensure environmental consideration across sectoral areas. To this end, we have proposed enacting a legal duty requiring tenure rightholders to integrate their socio-economic activities with environmental protection during land use decision making. We further frame mechanisms to guide the attitudes, and decisions of farmers and forest communities in making that transition to sustainable practices.

The search for development that is sustainable often results in the complex challenge of having to reconcile the need for socio-economic activities with protection of the environment. This challenge of integrating such fundamentally important considerations that often contrast, but should be mutually supportive, is necessarily addressed by legal and policy frameworks of the country in question. These could be laws and policies with competence to manage the environment, or to manage socio-economic and political activities that impact the environment. This challenge is profound for developing countries like Kenya that experience higher levels of degradation, poverty and food insecurity. Arguably in this context, while addressing integration involves reconciliation of legal principles for a coherent legal concept of sustainability, it is also a serious matter of survival for millions of people. This raises compelling reasons to ensure that any legal reform measures positively impact how these people make decisions on the socio-economic utilization of land or forestry resources that they have access to. The research aimed to develop a legal and policy framework that will facilitate integration of environmental protection with socio-economic activities during land use decision making, as a mechanism to achieve sustainability. We investigated how a legal/policy framework, founded in the 2010 Constitution, and in environmental and tenure rights laws of Kenya, can conceptually reconcile the right (and duty) respecting a clean environment, with socio-economic rights. The research further analysed how such conceptual reconciliation can impact integration in policies, plans and decision making by sectoral laws and institutions to ensure environmental consideration across sectoral areas. To this end, we have proposed enacting a legal duty requiring tenure rightholders to integrate their socio-economic activities with environmental protection during land use decision making. We further frame mechanisms to guide the attitudes, and decisions of farmers and forest communities in making that transition to sustainable practices.

This research explores decision making in land suitability with regard to natural resource management, as it is practised in South Africa and internationally. The complexity of the problem leads to the need to use stakeholder analysis and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis which are researched further in the dissertation. A framework for decision making on land suitability is suggested. It is applied experimentally in several case studies on decision making in land suitability with regard to natural resource management. A land suitability analysis provides a typical scenario whereby a hard factual approach such as a GIS with data on soils, climate, rainfall, topography, ecosystems, etc. is combined with socio-economic activities such as agriculture, forestry and nature conservation. Most land suitability analysis is carried out with the aid ofa GIS. However, a GIS is limited to largely objective, spatial data. It is here that multicriteria decision analysis plays an important role by combining the different stakeholder perspectives with socio-economic and scientific data in a comprehensive Decision Support System. In this research, the Analytic Hierarchy Process is used to produce an experimental model on decision making in land suitability and this model is then tested against real life case studies which proves the model to be a valid decision making technique. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2008.