Event Title
Applying the Law to Advance Sustainability: Making the Case for a Mechanism on Payment for Ecosystem Services for Sustainable Agriculture in Kenya
Location
Room 205
Start Date
3-7-2012 2:40 PM
End Date
3-7-2012 4:20 PM
Description
According to official literature, agriculture production, although a significant contributor the Kenyan economy, has been on the decline due to unsustainable land use practices, leading to land degradation and loss of fertility. This has far-reaching implications because agriculture is mainly small-scale, and practised by the dominantly rural population. As a consequence, food insecurity and rural poverty have been on the increase in recent decades. This outcome results in non-fulfilment of certain socio-economic rights to food or water, and undermines the constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment. This right to a clean and healthy environment whether sets a basis for legal measures that will protect and conserve natural ecosystems, including agricultural lands.
In Kenya, this right now encompasses a constitutional duty on every person, to collaborate with other persons, and with the state, to conserve the environment and ensure ecologically sustainable use and development. Although this duty may dominantly be implemented through regulatory legal provisions, this paper explores a hybrid legal approach involving a statutory duty of stewardship on land owners/farmers and an entitlement to payment for ecosystems service, when the minimum obligations set by the duty are exceed. In this context, payment for ecosystem services provides a mechanism to conserve the environment, and provide economic benefits to land owners or local communities. With the antecedent on fulfilment of the statutory stewardship duty, the benefits are ecological (stewardship + ecosystem services), and economic (sustainable agricultural production + payments for qualifying ecosystem services).
The normative challenges of such proposal are numerous: What is the scale of ecosystem benefits in context of small-scale farming and numerous small parcels of land; How does the law protect the rights of persons holding secondary interests in land such as spouses and children; What is the scope of qualifying ecosystem services? What are the safeguards for monitoring, certification and verification? It is necessary to ensure that rules on valuation of ecosystem services are not subject to instrumental (anthropocentric) notions which could exclude certain ecological functions – cultural; spiritual; aesthetic. The research comparatively examines existing explicit mechanisms on payment for ecosystem services, and other legal approaches to land uses that could further environmental conservation. We seek to propose a mechanism that goes beyond legislatively mandated stewardship to promote sustainable small-scale agriculture, conserve the environment and bring economic benefits to land owners/farmers.
Applying the Law to Advance Sustainability: Making the Case for a Mechanism on Payment for Ecosystem Services for Sustainable Agriculture in Kenya
Room 205
According to official literature, agriculture production, although a significant contributor the Kenyan economy, has been on the decline due to unsustainable land use practices, leading to land degradation and loss of fertility. This has far-reaching implications because agriculture is mainly small-scale, and practised by the dominantly rural population. As a consequence, food insecurity and rural poverty have been on the increase in recent decades. This outcome results in non-fulfilment of certain socio-economic rights to food or water, and undermines the constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment. This right to a clean and healthy environment whether sets a basis for legal measures that will protect and conserve natural ecosystems, including agricultural lands.
In Kenya, this right now encompasses a constitutional duty on every person, to collaborate with other persons, and with the state, to conserve the environment and ensure ecologically sustainable use and development. Although this duty may dominantly be implemented through regulatory legal provisions, this paper explores a hybrid legal approach involving a statutory duty of stewardship on land owners/farmers and an entitlement to payment for ecosystems service, when the minimum obligations set by the duty are exceed. In this context, payment for ecosystem services provides a mechanism to conserve the environment, and provide economic benefits to land owners or local communities. With the antecedent on fulfilment of the statutory stewardship duty, the benefits are ecological (stewardship + ecosystem services), and economic (sustainable agricultural production + payments for qualifying ecosystem services).
The normative challenges of such proposal are numerous: What is the scale of ecosystem benefits in context of small-scale farming and numerous small parcels of land; How does the law protect the rights of persons holding secondary interests in land such as spouses and children; What is the scope of qualifying ecosystem services? What are the safeguards for monitoring, certification and verification? It is necessary to ensure that rules on valuation of ecosystem services are not subject to instrumental (anthropocentric) notions which could exclude certain ecological functions – cultural; spiritual; aesthetic. The research comparatively examines existing explicit mechanisms on payment for ecosystem services, and other legal approaches to land uses that could further environmental conservation. We seek to propose a mechanism that goes beyond legislatively mandated stewardship to promote sustainable small-scale agriculture, conserve the environment and bring economic benefits to land owners/farmers.