Traditionally, land ownership and utilization has been a central feature of Kenya’s cultural, social and economic evolution. Because Kenya’s economy is largely agricultural, land is a very important component of the means of production and issues relating to land ownership and its concomitant rights comprise a large part of the litigation that is carried out in the Kenyan courts.

In recognition of the global movement towards improved environmental management and conservation, Kenya has assumed a number of obligations under international and environmental conventions, agreements and protocols and has in the recent past developed and adopted a new regime of environmental law codified in the Environmental Management and Co-ordination Act (Act No 9 of 1999).

The Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment of 1972 and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development twenty years later are widely regarded as heralding and even consolidating international environmental principles and laying a strong foundation for their further reinforcement and application.

These laws have made it possible to identify and apply the doctrinal principles governing environmental management particularly public participation and the need to facilitate information exchange including the dissemination of information on effective legal and regulatory instruments in the field of environment and development.

It is against this background that the National Council for Law Reporting (NCLR) in partnership with the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Institute for Law and Environmental Governance (ILEG) considered the need for the publication of the Environmental and Land Law Reports. Moreover, the need to aid judicial officers, legal practitioners and environmental management organs in the application, interpretation and enforcement of the new regime of environmental law has called for a sustained effort in the collection, consolidation and highlighting of Kenyan environmental case law. Hopefully, the Environment and Land Law Reports will contribute to nurturing a vibrant jurisprudence and academic discourse on environmental management as well as to the public’s understanding of the substantive and procedural law on environment and land use.

Environmental law is principally concerned with ensuring the sustainable utilization of natural resources according to a number of fundamental principles developed over the years through both municipal and international processes. In an ideal setting, the utilization of land and land based resources should adhere to the principles of sustainability, intergenerational equity, prevention, precautionary, the polluter pays, and public participation. In this inaugural edition, an attempt has been made to provide a synopsis of several decades of judicial interventions addressing important themes in environment and land jurisprudence as highlighted above.

The publication of the Environment and Land Law Reports series marks another milestone in the committment of the National Council for Law Reporting towards providing access to both general and specialized case law with a view to aiding the administration of justice, the understanding and application of the law and the evolution of Kenyan jurisprudence.

Johnson Evan Gicheru
Chief Justice of Kenya

Chairman, National Council for Law Reporting