Highlights of NECSA-K Achievements
- Category: Newsletters
- Date 15-10-2021
The National Environment Civil Society Alliance in Kenya has been very active in pushing for sectoral reforms through a number of sector specific coalitions and networks including the Kenya Forests Working Group; The Kenya Climate Change Working Group; Kenya Wetlands Forum; Kenya Water Partnership, Kenya Marine Forum, Kenya Wildlife Conservation Forum, Kenya Coalition for Wildlife Conservation and Management, Shelter forum, Kenya Oil and Gas Working Group. This has resulted in reforms including passing of legislations within the water, wetlands, climate change, wildlife, forest and energy sectors.
Unfortunately, all these sectors did not have a common platform for addressing national advocacy issues and planning for collective advocacy at any time leading to isolated advocacy efforts. Thus, the agitation of a new constitution provided a perfect opportunity for all environment civil society groups to speak in one voice towards putting in place appropriate policies and legislations hence formation of the alliance.
Thus, NECSA-K was formed in 2009 through a Civil Society Strengthening project at WWF Kenya Country Office, as a civil society platform for articulating and advocating for issues on the environment. Its establishment was necessitated by the need to have a platform for all environmental civil society groups in Kenya.
Since its formation, NECSA-K has continued to influence legislations in Kenya by providing comments to the on-going legislative processes. Initially, the alliance engaged with the committee of experts (CoE) during the process of developing the constitution. The alliance was able to provide E and NR related recommendations on the then draft constitution. The draft Constitution was promulgated in 2010.
The alliance held consultative forums with the then Constitution Implementation Commission (CIC) on reviewing and enacting E and NR related legislations. The role played by NECSA-K was later recognised in CIC’s quarterly reports. With many legislations being reviewed or developed in line with the constitution, the alliance prepared memoranda and provided inputs to various E & NR bills including; National Land Commission Bill, Land Bill, Mining and Geology Bill, Land Registration Bill, the Environmental Management and Coordination Amendment Bill 2014, water, fisheries and community land bill.Most of these bills including the National Land Commission Bill, the Land Bill, Land Registration Bill, the EMCA, water, fisheries and community land bill have been enacted into law. The alliance has also been very instrumental in providing inputs to the proposed natural resources (benefit sharing) bill currently under senate.
In 2014, the alliance gave its inputs on the wildlife security report developed by the tasckforce constituted by the Environment, Water and Natural Resources Cabinet Secretary to examine the causes of widespread poaching and wildlife security in the country. The alliance also gave its comments on the report for the proposed offshore sea sand harvesting off Likoni in Mombasa.
Highlights of NECSA 2020-2023
Over the past three years, some of the achievements of the NECSA-K Alliance include:
- Improved capacity for public consultations
- Participation and setting political agenda through scrutinizing the manifestos of the major policy parties in 2022 elections
- NECSA-K was able to scrutinize the political manifestos in the lead up to the elections and generated these questions which were presented to the Media Council of Kenya.
- Contributed to The National Sanitation Policy 2030 reviews
- Environment, Social and Governance standards adherence in the proposed Rironi-Mau Summit Expressway
- Environment and health safety considerations in Nuclear Authority regulations)
- Generated six memoranda on Environmental Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) reports for large infrastructure development projects
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Reviewed the Narok County Spatial Plan and generated comments
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Reviewed and lobbied for the Draft Environmental Management and Coordination Bill, 2021 (Amendment)