Participatory Aspirations of Environmental Governance in East Africa

Abstract

Would it make sense to ask when and how the participatory aspirations of a multi-stakeholder approach to governing a region’s shared environmental problems and concerns are realised? Why so? Such questions presuppose that environmental law can be analysed as a mechanism for steering and controlling the ordering of particular social outcomes and which is pursued through the promulgation of standards backed up by enforcement standards. In approaching these broad themes within one coherent framework, the scope of inquiry about the participative nature of environmental regulation in East Africa must be widened from a purely formalist legal perspective, to one that also approaches environmental regulation as a social practice. Adopting this unfamiliar line of inquiry (at least to ‘conventional’ environmental lawyers) appears promising for a number of reasons. Firstly, a regulatory perspective on any aspect of governance asks whether the steering mechanisms function effectively and efficiently. Secondly, the regulatory perspective asks whether the effectiveness of the governance mechanisms deployed could be improved. Thirdly, a regulatory perspective would ask whether the rulesetting and decision-making regime is democratically accountable to the extent that the emergent rules and decisions affect the public interest.