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Okidi, Charles Odidi --- "Capacity Building in Environmental Law in African Universities" [2011] ELECD 642; in Benidickson, Jamie; Boer, Ben; Benjamin, Herman Antonio; Morrow, Karen (eds), "Environmental Law and Sustainability after Rio" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Environmental Law and Sustainability after Rio

Editor(s): Benidickson, Jamie; Boer, Ben; Benjamin, Herman Antonio; Morrow, Karen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857932242

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Capacity Building in Environmental Law in African Universities

Author(s): Okidi, Charles Odidi

Number of pages: 16

Extract:

3. Capacity building in environmental
law in African universities
Charles Odidi Okidi

1. INTRODUCTION
At dinner in New York only a few years ago, a group of lawyers was
surprised by my explanation of environmental law teaching and research in
Africa and the role of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
in promoting institutional developments in this field. As environmental
lawyers themselves, they shared the once-popular assumption that African
countries were hostile to environmental law because it was inconsistent with
their ambitions for development; an assumption originating in the atmosphere
preceding the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. 1
This chapter reviews developments in environmental law teaching,
research and institutional capacity building in Africa during the formative
years from 1978 to the present. In 1978, a Workshop on Environmental
Education and Training took place in Nairobi. The event revealed very little
evidence of actual teaching and research on environmental law in Africa.
Twenty-five years later, in 2004, the first Symposium on Environmental Law
by African scholars took place in Nakuru. Between these two landmarks, the
range of environmental law activity increased significantly, supported and
encouraged by a number of international initiatives under the auspices of the
UNEP and other UN agencies. A second symposium at Entebbe in 2006
demonstrated the scope of further developments and adopted a number of
instruments to institutionalise an association for environmental law in Africa
and spelled out conditions for its sustainability.


2. THE CONTEXT

The initial problem faced in assessing concern for ...