Human rights and environmental management in Kenya: analysis of the right to a clean and healthy environment

The right to clean and healthy environment is now accepted as a right on its own. It is currently expressly provided for in constitutions of more than one hundred countries including the new Constitution of Kenya promulgated on 27th August 2010. The express inclusion of this right in the new Constitution is indicative of its acceptance and the secure position it now enjoys in human rights discourse. The ‘right to clean and healthy environment’ is basically defined as a claim to an environment that is not polluted and which engenders all factors of life and health. There was need for this right in Kenya to address the inadequacy of ‘right to clean environment’ provisions anchored chiefly in mere statutes by enacting it as an enforceable Constitutional provision. Such a Constitutional provision entitles all persons in Kenya to a clean environment that is not harmful to their health as of right. This dissertation therefore undertook a critical analysis of the nature and scope of an ideal ‘right to a clean and healthy environment’ and thereafter juxtaposed the right proposed under the new Constitution against this analysis leading to a conclusion that the proposed right lacks clarity and establishes an unduly anthropocentric right. Relevant recommendations are however made in this regard such as amending the provision to make it less anthropocentric, and enforceable.