Effectiveness of The Environmental Management Act in the enforcement of Environmental Protection: Lessons drawn from Kenya

Abstract

he last decades of the twenty first century there has been an enormous increase in problems in the management of the environment due to a number of factors. Most of these factors that have greatly attributed to environmental degradation are human induced and can be evidenced by the creation of legislation to regulate any human conduct that can harm the environment. The common effects of environmental problems today include climate change, global warming, biodiversity loss, the overuse of non-renewable natural resources such as fossil fuels and minerals, deforestation, water pollution, habitant loss etc all of which have a great effect on human life. As the world continues to suffer from the adverse effects of environmental degradation there is need to ensure there’s laws and regulations that can help reduce these effects. This research sets out the general character of environmental problems in Zambia, it evaluates current Zambian legal framework on environmental protection while identifying the gaps in the legal framework and how the lack of comprehensive legal framework in turn further plays a contributing role in the continued decline of the health of the environment in order to draw lessons of best practices from Kenya’s jurisdiction.The methodology of this research is qualitative method of research, data was collected from both primary and secondary sources ,that is , text books , journals , local and foreign legislation, law reports ,other dissertations . The design is evaluative as it seeks to draw lessons from another jurisdiction which in this case is Kenya. The findings of this research are that Zambia’s current legal framework on the protection of the environment lacks the capacity to meet today’s environmental needs and there is little of no enforcement of current legislation .Therefore, there is need to amend the existing legislation to adapt to the current happenings of today and also implementation of initiatives that will foster the effective enforcement of environmental protection regulations.