Kenya’s Professionals call for a supreme natural resource law

Posted on | oktober 10, 2012 | 1 Comment

The Association of Professionals in East Africa, the Kenyan Chapter has initiated a plan aimed at developing an umbrella law to guide the management of natural resources.

According to Dr Daniel Ichangi, the Chairman of APSEA said the recent discoveries of oil, coal, titanium and other minerals necessitate the need to have an overriding law.

Currently, the country has separate laws governing various sectors of the natural resources. There is law on forestry, wildlife, water and land.

But the situation, according to Dr Ichangi, the situation does not augur well for the country.

“What is needed is a coordinated management of natural resources,” he said.

Benjamin Washiali, the vice chairman of the parliamentary committee on natural resources said the MPs are aware of the sensitive of the Chapter 5 of the constitution which deals with land and natural resources and plan to engage with each other over the matter.

Dr Ichangi said the APSEA is engaging MPs knowing that the efforts are coming late given that each key sector of the natural resources have their own laws, which at times appear contradictory to one another.

“Kenyans are yet to benefit from the abundant natural resources because of lack of proper laws,” he said.

At the meeting in Mombasa, the APSEA chairman said unless the laws are harmonized, the country may not avoid resource-related conflicts that have bedeviled man African countries.

He attributed resource-based conflicts to poor management formula.

John Kioli, Chairman of the Kenya Climate Change Working Group said it is a good thing for the APSEA to initiate the process at the time before the country comes up with another law governing climate change.

He said his organisation’s presence at the meeting was to offer lessons learned from their efforts to develop the Climate Change Bill but supported the need to have a consolidated law that would govern these cross-cutting issues.

Last week, Dr Wilbur Ottichilo, MP for Emuhaya tabled in the Kenya’s Parliament the Kenya Climate Change Authority Bill. The bill seeks to establish an authority to handle issues on climate change.

The Association of Professional Societies in East Africa (APSEA) is an Association that brings together professional bodies of diverse disciplines.

Currently, the Association has thirty three (33) corporate members in Kenya constituting all major professions in the country including medicine, law, accounting, engineering, geology, architecture, food science, public and corporate administration, veterinary science, planning, procurement, and marketing among many others.

AUTHOR: Henry Neondo
URL: http:// www.africasciencenews.org
E-MAIL: neondohenry [at] yahoo.com

Comments

One Response to “Kenya’s Professionals call for a supreme natural resource law”

  1. Kenneth Odero
    oktober 15th, 2012 @ 11:29

    One of our undoing is that we are always quick to front-load opportunities with hurdles instead of first focusing on the core issues. Which economy has done this and been successful? None from the west, east, or north. Why should we? The evidence clearly shows that you need a certain level of material existence to be able to better manage the environment. Unfortunately, there is some price to pay for it. But let it not be suggested that Africans, much less Kenyans, should carry bear this cost!

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