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Africa Knows! It is time to decolonise minds

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Accepted Paper: E30-03. To panel E30.

Title of paper:

Author:

Charles Okidi (University Of Nairobi).

Long abstract paper:
The seeds of global environmental awareness and practice were planted at the United Nations General Assembly in December 1968 when the Swedish delegation successfully proposed that a conference on environment be held in Stockholm in 1972. As agenda for the conference unfolded the Group of 77, which includes African countries, faulted it arguing that it was not inclusive enough. The Conference Secretary General constituted the so-called Founex experts whose recommendations rectified the anomalies.

The caution by Group of 77 was misunderstood in certain quarters leading A.K. Kasdan to write that there was a 'Third World War-Environment versus Development' published in Record of the Bar Association of the City of New York Vol. 26 (1971) pp. 454-464. Little did such commentators, and their lot, know that the Group of 77 were so committed and effective that they ensured that the United Nations agency created as a result of the Conference was located in Africa in 1974 and is still there.

When a new area, such as environment emerges, misunderstandings abound. That is why participants in a mega-conference in Washington DC in early 1980's were amazed to learn that one of the participants, as African, was teaching environmental law in a Kenyan University. They had been under the impression that African countries objected to anything to do with environmental protection. Little did they know that the first environmental law course at University of Nairobi was offered in 1979. At the level of practice, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) adopted the well-conceived African Convention for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in 1968, and has undergone a comprehensive amendment completed in 2003. The 1968 convention actually replaced a 1933 convention once signed by colonial powers.

With the foregoing perspectives in mind this paper will discuss modern day developments such as: scholarship in African universities as shown by Association of Environmental Law Lecturers in African Universities (ASSELLAU); targeted initiatives such as Project on Environmental Law and Institutions in Africa (PADELIA); Regional and sub-regional environmental treaties; and leadership in scholarship and practice in environmental law.

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