Interplay between institutions and implementation

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However, the study argues that putting such a responsibility at the president’s office serves a more profound function. When you look at the government growth plan, the aim has been infrastructure development. Achieving the green agenda has stood in the form of infrastructural development in several ways. There is a need to ensure that the government has this in check.

The government recognizes and knows how much of an influence environmental concerns have specifically regarding the country’s development.

It is not that the president is committed to synchronizing policies…to accord such responsibilities to the highest level means there is the control between environment and development (Environmental lawyer, Nairobi 11/2020).

According to a lawyer who has been working with CSOs in Nairobi, putting responsibilities at the office of the president implies that the government is keen to exercise control and be able to manage both the environment and development affairs. Since so much money is received from external funding institutions, the management from the top is even more necessary. This also plays a legitimate role as it shows the country’s level of commitment to matters of environment and climate change. A CSO representative, however, departs from this view and notes;

We felt that climate change was beyond all these ministries and sectors.

So it needed to have a very strong, maybe authority that was going to deal with it specifically (Staff, SUSWATCH, Nairobi 12/2020).

He mentions that it is essential to understand politics that relate to the environment and narrates the historical course of the development of climate change policies. He reminds me that climate change issues were initially at the prime minister’s office during the grand coalition government until 2013. He points out that when the environmental law was formulated in Kenya (EMCA 1999), there was no mention of climate change. This is because climate change has not become an international plan. “Because if you look at the act of 1999, there is no mention of climate change, because, by that time, it was being formulated that climate change is not an international plan. It was just literally about environmental conservation, environmental enforcement,” he argues. The impression I get is that there was a push and pull on which government institution should be responsible. Since this was not easy to determine, the responsibility was pushed to the president’s office.

The study argues that this reorganization creates order and disorder in the green visions; it includes and excludes actors in the process. Two complementary roles should be executed by

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agencies involved in managing climate finance in Kenya. Finance management brings together several agencies under the National Treasury and a supportive role that ensures technical and policy management support under the MoEF through the Climate Change Directorate. In some cases, these roles overlap and are complementary, thus providing greater integration and coordination of delivery in institutions. Other ministries and sectors with different responsibilities include the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, responsible for policy. In contrast, others such as the Ministry of Energy, Ministry for Education Science and Technology, and Ministry of Agriculture are responsible for technology. They provide climate finance in Kenya with opportunities for engagement with various stakeholders and seizing multiple opportunities by establishing integrated climate finance mechanisms (Odhengo et al., 2019).

Executive order number one of 2018 created the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. Its vision is “A Clean, healthy, safe and sustainably managed Environment and Forestry Resources’’. This ministry has changed names over the years. The mandate is to give climate change-related technical advice and services to the National Treasury, National Climate Change Council (NCCC), and the Technical Advisory Committee. This is done to ensure conservation and management of natural resources and the environment for current and future generations.

Additionally, the Ministry also coordinates how the country responds to climate change. It has various institutions and departments that assist in responses related to climate change. The Ministry also acts as a national central point for the UNFCCC. The Inter-Ministerial Climate Finance Technical Advisory Committee established under the Ministry of Environment and Forestry works with the climate finance mechanism (Climate Change Fund) to provide climate finance advice to the government and NCCC. Its representatives include the Council of Governors (C.O.G), line ministries, academia, civil society, and the private sector. The committee’s role may overlap with that of the Treasury’s Climate Finance Unit, and as such, it needs to build closer synergies and complementarity (Odhengo et al., 2019).

Under the Climate Change Directorate (CCD), the Ministry of Environment and Forestry is responsible for the overall implementation and coordination of the NCCAP 2018–2022. These involve partners coordinating and reporting the implementation of climate actions. According to the Climate Change Act 2016, CCD is responsible for offering various ministries and county governments analytical support on climate change-related issues and technical assistance to county governments. Additionally, it has a role of coordinating the country’s compliance to international obligations such as developing national communications and updates on biennial

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reports and Kenya’s GHG inventory, reporting on NDCs, and representing the country in international negotiations. It also coordinates the execution of gender and intergenerational plans such as national and county government youth climate programs, action plans related to climate finance, optimizing the country’s opportunities to mobilize climate finance, and identifying mechanisms requiring low-carbon development (Odhengo et al., 2019).

The chief government agency that regulates and coordinates environmental protection is NEMA. Apart from the legislative and administrative functions, NEMA also implements projects and programs geared towards conserving and restoring the environment. As an institution, it has access to the Adaptation Fund and the Green Climate Fund by developing proposals that meet their standards (UNDP, 2019).

Within NEMA, the climate change coordinator is responsible for all activities relating to climate change except the financial aspect, which lies with the National Treasury. The roles include mainstreaming climate change in all environmental assessments and collaborating with other actors as they are the functions spelled out in the climate change act. It is established under MoEF, within which new policies, programs, and plans are legally required to go through the Strategic Environmental Assessment process (SEA) before they are implemented. This is meant to integrate environmental protection measures into the plans, programs, or policies before rolling out. SEA broadly documents essential concerns of the environment to particular projects (Musyoka & Field, 2018).

SEA is created against the backdrop that it is better to prevent the environment from degrading, and this is why it aims to incorporate environmental aspects at the planning stages. The study argues that there has been a lack of implementation and that follow-up processes are usually ineffective. This is because of minimal political will. I observe a disconnect between what the politicians say and how the institutions charged with environmental management responsibility respond. As a result, development programs well-intentioned by the donor organization end up, especially on capacity-building issues. The citizens are constantly in the government of uncertainty, which means that the living conditions hardly improve as it is framed. I note that laws and legal frameworks relating to the environment are abundant, but the implementation aspect has remained a mirage.

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