Sustainable Development

http://www.globalissues.org/issue/367/sustainable-development


The idea of sustainable development grew from numerous environmental movements in earlier decades. Summits such as the Earth Summit in Rio, Brazil, 1992, were major international meetings to bring sustainable development to the mainstream.

However, the record on moving towards sustainability so far appears to have been quite poor. The concept of sustainability means many different things to different people, and a large part of humanity around the world still live without access to basic necessities.

Poverty and the Environment

Many readers are probably familiar with the tale of four blind men being asked to identify the object in front of them. Each blind man just investigated a part so no one identified the whole as an elephant. Similarly, both environmental degradation and poverty alleviation are urgent global issues that have a lot in common, but are often treated separately. This article explores some of these linkages.

Both environmental degradation and poverty alleviation are urgent global issues that have a lot in common, but are often treated separately. Consider the following:

•Human activities are resulting in mass species extinction rates higher than ever before, currently approaching 1000 times the normal rate;
•Human-induced climate change is threatening an even bleaker future;
•At the same time, the inequality of human societies is extreme:
•The United Nations 1998 Human Development Report reveals that, “Globally, the 20% of the world’s people in the highest-income countries account for 86% of total private consumption expenditures—the poorest 20% a minuscule 1.3%”
•To highlight this inequality further, consider that approximately 1 billion people suffer from hunger and some 2 to 3.5 billion people have a deficiency of vitamins and minerals
•Yet, some 1.2 billion suffer from obesity
•One billion people live on less than a dollar a day, the official measure of poverty
•However, half the world — nearly three billion people — lives on less than two dollars a day.

http://www.globalissues.org/article/425/poverty-and-the-environment

INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: Building the Natural Assets of the World’s Poor

INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: Building the Natural Assets of the World’s Poor

Across the globe, vibrant social movements are emerging that link issues of resource access, social security, environmental risks, and disaster vulnerability. Although everyone suffers the
effects of pollution, global warming, and resource exploitation, poor people are especially vulnerable since they live closer to the margin of survival and are less able to afford cushions
from environmental ills. At the same time, poor communities often face disproportionately heavy burdens from environmental degradation. Increasingly, low-income urban and rural communities
around the world are organizing to fight for environmental justice – that is, for more equitable access to natural resources and environmental quality, including clean air and water. These new
environmental movements connect sources and sinks; North and South; ecology and equity; and asset building and hazard vulnerability. They have begun to articulate new ideas about the
quality of life, and about the meaning of development and modernization.

Environmental pollution and natural resource degradation are not simply ‘quality of life’ issues primarily of concern to middle-class people in the global North. In cities of both the North and
the South, it is often the residents of poor neighborhoods who are most exposed to air fouled by car exhaust, diesel fumes, and deliberate and accidental industrial emissions. As urban growth
accelerates, poor neighborhoods struggle for access to green space, public transportation, sanitation, and clean water and air. And in rural areas, it is the poor who are most dependent on
natural resources from fisheries and forests, to rivers and rangelands, and at the same time least able to protect them from despoliation.

http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=krista_harper

Strengthening locus standi in Public Interest Environmental Litigation: Has Leadership Moved from the United States to South Africa?

http://www.lead-journal.org/content/10163.pdf


There is an increasing shift towards globalisation not only of the world economies but also of the world's legal systems. Broadening of locus standi in South Africa has deconstructed the fears that informed the conservative common law approach to the issue of locus standi or standing, with its roots in private law individual rights. Most of the reasons advanced for constraining locus standi in public interest environmental law, and constitutional matters for that matter, can all be ameliorated through procedural safe guards and rules tried and tested under the common law, such as rules regarding legal costs, and keeping frivolous and vexatious litigation out of the courts.

However, the USA seems to be lagging behind in mainstreaming global international developments in public interest environmental litigation, particularly at the federal level by sticking to archaic common law rules on standing where a litigant wants to bring suit on behalf of the environment. The strict approach to standing in federal courts in the USA since the times of Sierra Club v Morton can be change if the federal judges are prepared to make use of comparative constitutional analysis in adjudication, drawing on lessons from a number of progressive new democracies, in this case the South African experience.

I argue that the US federal courts have moved too slowly in following international and foreign developments in the modernisation of the rules governing public interest environmental litigation to the detriment of sustainable development and environmental civic organisations in the USA. I conclude that it is time for the US federal courts, and other conservative common law jurisdictions, to make use of comparative constitutional tools to modernise this blemish aspect of their jurisprudence, following the lead by South Africa.

http://www.lead-journal.org/content/10163.pdf

Legislative Regulation of Traditional Medicinal Knowledge in Eritrea

On 21 March 1996, Eritrea acceded to the Convention on Biological Diversity which, among others, obliges states to sustainably conserve and develop customary uses of biological resources. Among the many forms of traditional practices of biological resources is traditional medicinal knowledge. Research has revealed that Eritrea has abundant pool of such knowledge and a high percentage of its population, as it is true with many developing and underdeveloped countries, resorts to traditional medicine for curing numerous ailments.

However, no specific policy or legislative framework has yet been developed to sift, preserve and encourage the practice. Analysis of existing Eritrean laws and policies will show that they are neither adequate nor specific enough to be used in the preservation and development of Eritrean traditional medicinal knowledge. This article will, therefore, in view of the rich, yet unregulated, traditional medicinal knowledge resource in Eritrea, highlight the need for the development of a specific legal instrument legislation for Eritrea from the perspective of international and country level experiences. It will be argued that the development of a specific legislation is preferred to the alternative of keeping traditional medicinal knowledge as a component of a legal instrument developed for a larger mass such as health or traditional knowledge.

http://www.lead-journal.org/content/10130.pdf

LINKING ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND POVERTY REDUCTION IN AFRICA: AN ANALYSIS OF THE REGIONAL LEGAL RESPONSES TO

Poverty has been identified as the main cause and consequence of environmental degradation in Africa . It follows that if poverty is the main cause of environmental degradation in Africa , then policies, programmes and legal provisions designed to protect the environment in the region will be unsuccessful without a significant improvement in the living standards, wellbeing and livelihoods of the poor. In the same breath, since poverty is a consequence of environmental degradation, then the protection of the environment is critical to the achievement of poverty reduction initiatives such as the Millennium Development Goals in Africa .

Hence, it can be argued that there is a mutual relationship between the achievement of environmental protection and reduction of poverty in Africa . This article therefore examines the extent to which the various regional legal instruments for the protection of the environment in Africa recognise this mutual linkage by providing for the promotion of poverty reduction and socio-economic development as integral aspect of their objective of ensuring the protection of the environment in the region.

http://www.lead-journal.org/content/10112.pdf

Tanzania : National Aquaculture Legislation Overview

National Aquaculture Legislation Overview

http://www.fao.org/fishery/legalframework/nalo_zambia/en

Over the past few decades, environmental protection has emerged from a point of obscurity to one of the important issues of our time. Both at the international and national planes, the dominant theme of the environmental protection movement is the achievement of sustainable development.1 It is the theme, which underlies the Rio Declaration on Development and Environment, the Tanzania National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP) and the Tanzania National Conservation Strategy for Sustainable Development (NCSSD).2 The contemporary international norm which underpins environmental law generally is undoubtedly the notion of sustainable development. The pioneering World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission) convened by the United Nations General Assembly in 1983 in response to global environmental concerns, describes sustainable development as, ‘the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’

Water Law, Water Rights and Water Supply in Zambia – Issues and Perspectives

Water Law, Water Rights and Water Supply in Zambia – Issues and Perspectives

http://www.bvsde.paho.org/bvsacd/cd46/zambia.pdf

Over the past two decades, a number of international declarations have sought to ensure access to safe water and sanitation for the majority (or all) of the world’s people. Despite these
declarations, however, the reality is that clean water and safe waste disposal remains a life and death problem in much of the world – that in the 21st century. Zambia’s population stands at over 9 million with a high urbanisation rate resulting in over 50% of the population living in urban and periurban areas.

Zambia’s population with access to safe drinking water is estimated at 43% and the corresponding figure for sanitation is 23%. This is so despite commendable investment programmes being implemented with the support of donor agencies during and after the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (IDWSSD). One of the major lessons has been that solutions to community water supply and sanitation should be sought less in technology and products and more in social, institutional and financial domains. In other words, more in the “software” domain.

Unfortunately, even in this new awakening, water laws and water rights issues have so far been considered peripheral. For example, extremely rarely is an individual’s basic right to an adequate water supply enshrined in national law. The paper attempts to identify (and promote awareness and understanding of), the constraints and enabling conditions provided by existing water laws (statutory and customary) with regard to the poor having access to, or being entitled to, a safe and reliable supply of water and sanitation.

The paper examines Zambia’s water policy, laws and rights regimes as they relate to water supply and sanitation provision for the poor while at the same time putting into perspective the current debate surrounding economic, social and cultural rights vis-a-vis political and civil rights. It is concluded that there are more constraints than enabling conditions provided to domestic water supply and sanitation (provision and access) for rural/urban poor by written and unwritten local/national laws and water rights (and related) issues in Zambia
.

Environmental Law in Developing Countries

Environmental Law in Developing Countries

http://data.iucn.org/dbtw-wpd/edocs/EPLP-043.pdf

POVERTY AND ENVIRONMENT: PRIORITIES FOR RESEARCH AND POLICY

POVERTY AND ENVIRONMENT: PRIORITIES FOR RESEARCH AND POLICY

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/FORSYTHT/povenv_forsyth_leach.pdf

Wildlife utilization in Côte d’Ivoire and West Africa - potentials and constraints for development cooperation

Wildlife utilization in Côte d’Ivoire and West Africa - potentials and constraints for
development cooperation

http://www2.gtz.de/dokumente/bib/00-0441.pdf

Kenyan Forests and International Law

By Arie Trouwborst*

Kenya has long prided itself as a conscientious actor in the international arena, not in the last place when it comes to the conservation and sustainable use of the natural environment. The Kenyan government has actively supported the development and implementation of many an international convention with bearing on the environment. Hosting oHostingkkthe headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), its capital Nairobi is a prominent centre of international environmental law and policy. Recent events, however, have threatened to cast a shadow over this record of international performance.

http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Kenya/law.html

Environmental Justice in South Africa

The history of environmental policy in South Africa is a cruel and perverse one. Under colonial and apartheid governments, thousands of black South Africans were forcibly removed from
their ancestral lands to make way for game parks, and billions of rands were spent on preserving wildlife and protecting wild ¶owers while people in “townships” and “homelands”1 lived without adequate food, shelter, and clean water. Whites-only policies in national parks meant that black South Africans could not enjoy the country’s rich natural heritage, and draconian poaching laws kept the rural poor from desperately needed resources (Beinart and Coates 1995; Carruthers 1995).

In short, ¶ora and fauna were often considered more important than the majority of the country’s population. As a result, black South Africans (and anti-apartheid activists in general) paid little attention to environmental debates during the apartheid era. At best, the environment was seen to be a white, suburban issue of little relevance to the anti-apartheid struggle. At worst, environmental policy was seen as an explicit tool of racially based oppression.
With the easing of apartheid legislation in the late 1980s and the unbanning of anti-apartheid political parties and activists in the early 1990s, all of this changed. The liberalization of South African politics created discursive and institutional space for a rethinking of environmental issues, and a vibrant debate on the meaning, causes, and effects of environmental decay began in earnest. Perhaps the most fundamental of these developments was the simplest: a broadening of the de¤nition of ecology.

Once the environment was rede¤ned to include the working and living space of black South Africans it quickly became apparent that environmental initiatives were akin to other post-apartheid, democratic objectives.
A wide range of trade unions, nongovernmental organizations, civic associations, and academics quickly adopted the new environmental discourse and within a few short years began to challenge the environmental
practices and policies of the past (Cock and Koch 1991; Ramphele and McDowell 1991).

http://www.ohioswallow.com/extras/0821414151_excerpt.pdf

Solidarity for Environmental Justice in Southern Africa

This position paper is an invitation to build stronger solidarity in support of environmental justice in Southern Africa. The immediate reason is that our communities and activists are faced with a commodity boom - a new scramble for Africa. The new scramble, like the old, is driven by the interests of outside powers, the traditional players now joined by China, India and Brazil, in the
resources of Africa. These interests are being accommodated by African governments, who themselves are taking part in the scramble, while the legacies of previous rounds of accumulation and their effects on people’s environments have not yet been cleaned up and are unlikely ever to be cleaned up.

The balance of political power in all of our societies, while dynamic and subject to ongoing change, suggests that Southern Africa will face increasing environmental injustice in the way its resources are used, including the ongoing enclosure of people’s commonly owned and used resources into private domains, the unequal and unfair relationships between local populations,national decision makers and private investors, the ongoing exclusion from decision making of local communities, and the intensifying imposition of externalities. Current developments,specifically the commodities boom and the rapid expansion of South African business and industry into the region, make it increasingly less feasible for environmental justice activists in the region to continue working in isolation in our respective countries. Southern Africa is already a single unit, and increasingly EJ activists face the same polluting companies and similar issues in different settings in the region.

This paper explores the idea of environmental justice in Southern Africa, in the context of the region’s history and current challenges

http://www.groundwork.org.za/Publications/Solidarity%20for%20EJ%20in%20SA.pdf

African Climate Change: A Call for Environmental Justice

African Climate Change: A Call for Environmental Justice

December 18th, 2009 Leave a comment Go to comments
Rev. Tegga Lendado, PhD.

African environmental justice is long overdue. Africans need global leadership and personal commitment to save their children. Not only talk, but action! It is not about the usual so-called ‘global warming’ debate but the erratic African climatic crisis induced by its detrimental effects.
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The world’s climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark is convening to devise an international strategy on the issue the environmental crisis affecting global climate. Africa’s contribution is negligible compared with the Western nations, Japan and China. As such, Africa is a victim of the climatic extremes that threaten the life of innocent human beings and their environment. For too long, Africans arguably attributed the climate crisis to God’s wrath for our spiritual conditions and so on.

But, now we have found out that our enemies are “we” on the other hemisphere. The culprits in Copenhagen will play the role of both defendant and judge at the same time. Africans have no choice but to stand and fight for their right to survive. They need to live like others. They believe they have God-given right to freely breathe unpolluted air. They do not want to be extinct like the dinosaurs. Thus, it now becomes a moral issue for the Western and industrialized nations to clean up their mess. You cannot kill someone and go back to your bed to sleep and snore. God will shake up your conscience if you have any. Some how, someway the Almighty God who created us equally from the dust but in His own image will execute His justice. Fighting for climate conservation is a just war. It is for the survival of the poorest and the weakest rather than the fittest.

The Ethiopian Prime Minister Zenawi, who is a controversial figure with regards to his own government, represents the victimized 53 Africa nations and peoples. Nevertheless, the critical issue he is bringing to the table is far from being contentious. It is the very same issue that many international humanitarian organizations, national experts and individuals of bare common sense have been advocating for many decades. I am with the PM of Ethiopia on this burning issue as he debates this particular African dilemma. All serious and sensible Africans and other good willed people around the world should rally around his plea before world leaders in Copenhagen.

I am not saying this as unconcerned by-stander. I opposed the massacre of trees for the European market consumption in 1980’s in Mozambique where I worked as a forestry engineer. The government needed ‘foreign currency’ badly to feed its newly independent nation. Africans shipped raw logs of black ebony to Europe and Japan. Since the country could not afford reforestation, it only became just a little more than a talk rather than an alternative activity.
As head of regional forestry and wildlife office, I had fought against the communist military government’s land policy in 1970s, which contributed to further depletion of the virgin forest of Ethiopia. We managed to plant 11 million trees in the central region of Ethiopia before I moved to Mozambique.

Later, I helped in some forestry development projects in Southern Africa. One of the reasons I abandoned the profession was because of such onslaughts on the natural resources of Africa without due consideration to the consequences or future restoration.
Now about 30 years later, I am still weeping with the world over the spilt milk. While I praise the cooperation of the Prime Minister of Denmark, I challenge the resolute apathy of the culprits. They do not seem to be interested to rescue Africa after years of their unchecked exploitation. As Dr. Martin Luther King said, ” Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere (paraphrased)”. I can therefore, only agree with our late Emperor Haile Selassie, “God and history will judge” in due season if Africans mismanage God’s resources.

As a side note of caution, let me say to my fellow global environmental activists that no amount of monetary compensation can fully recover the loss. Such environmental iniquity and irresponsible stewardship should humble them before the enlightened world. Since monetary award to corrupt African governments will only aggravate the situation, I would suggest that an international committee of legal, environmental and ethical experts be formed to devise a strategy to recoup the damage, manage and conserve the environment, fund reforestation of indigenous species, pay for training, research, sustainability and development.
Given the gravity of the climate change due mainly to forest depletion, I am also calling on all Africans and friends of Africa worldwide, not to polarize or jeopardize the forum but to agree in principle and policy on this one solitary issue, i.e., to stand for Africa’s environmental justice beyond all other divisive differences.
May this message win the hearts and heads of the dignitaries and conferees of Copenhagen Convention!
Rev. Tegga Lendado, PhD.
O.A.S.I.S of American Solutions for Solutions
Atlanta, USA.

http://ecadforum.com/blog/?p=2948