The Fallacy of Environmental Policing in Eastern Africa
blurb:isstoday:10122008enviropolice
10 December 2008: The Fallacy of Environmental Policing in Eastern Africa
‘The Environmental enforcement task is not always perceived to be of high importance in grand strategies for policing and there is a belief that environmental enforcement is particularly complex’
The above statement captures the complexities of the new role of police in environmental policing - particularly in Eastern Africa where the environmental task force and the institution that governs it is quite young. This is as observed by a serving high ranking police official in Eastern Africa and corroborated by the thoughts of a Police Chief in a country in Scandinavia. The statement, it should be noted, is true of policing experiences of both developed and developing countries and one can only imagine the Herculean task that lies ahead in realizing environmental policing in Eastern Africa. The latter geo-political space is plagued with threats and vulnerabilities to environmental security, due to existing intermittent natural resource conflicts, the social tussles that emanate from this and the breakdown of governance as pertains to sharing of minerals, as well as scarce and customarily, economically and demographically contested resources like land.
The above environmental threats and vulnerabilities are enough justification for environmental policing - this relatively new institution in Africa’s law enforcement system. However, a contentious question is whether it is really possible to talk about environmental policing in Africa and particularly Eastern Africa at this point in time? The realities of bureaucratic politics when it comes to environmental governance have a huge impact. There is the question of the appreciation or lack of it of environmental sustainability as a human security variable within grand strategy architectures. There is also the question of the dominant political systems at play in respective jurisdictions that do not prioritize environmental enforcement and protection in armed service policies and policy-making.
It should be noted that the current poor environmental enforcement function of this family of the armed service is sketched from an historical development perspective. At a time when the perspective of environmental crime is held at a more complex level, this part of the world is still grappling with those aspects of environmental enforcement better understood as ‘Brown Environmental Enforcement policing functions’. A common denominator in what is the accepted environmental enforcement role in Eastern Africa jurisdictions is the over-reliance on ‘Brown enforcement and compliance issues’. This has all to do with noise, nuisance, emissions and waste. The reality on the ground however is that these countries are by and large affected by negative effects of globalization including highly complex environmental crime activities like bio-piracy, circumvention of environmental legislation loopholes by multinationals and ingenious trafficking of plant and animal species. The over-reliance of ‘Brown Policing’ overshadows the latter.
On the other hand, the police force has been dealt a great blow by societal stereotypical notions of what they are expected to do and prioritize. Policy makers, despite the police’s weak but dedicated reaction and pro-active approach environmental protection, have put little emphasis on this function on a pecuniary basis in resource allocation. There is also a lack of rational and dedicated ‘National Environmental Policy Plans’ that situate environmental protection and sustainability within politics and society.
Another problem has been in the lack of cognitive investment in ready windows of opportunities that would restate environmental policing functions. Examples of un-tapped portals are police training institutions/police science pedagogy entry points. In Ethiopia for example one would not be wrong to argue that the police is in the direction of infusing environmental enforcement as one of the general tasks of the police. The police science orientation of the Ethiopian Police University College has sought, albeit at minimal levels, the contextualization of environmental crime management and jurisprudence training at almost all levels of police cadres training. However, it should be noted that rationalization of the same would boost the country’s functional architecture of environmental policing. This should be recognized by relevant policy makers.
The point here is that for an integrated contribution to security, environmental enforcement has to be embedded in the total package of police functions, services and training thereof. The other fallacy of environmental policing in this part of Africa also requires that for effective execution of their environmental task, police require relevant know-how and competencies, ample information and good capacity in relevant human resources. By en large, this means that there is a need for a rational police training pedagogy on environmental criminology, jurisprudence and information management systems.
The last fallacy is that the police are not the only exclusive and mandated actor in the field of environmental enforcement and compliance. Other entities that have an enforcement tradition in wildlife protection for example, forestry and other sectors have this role too. For effective environmental policing, these entities have to coordinate efforts whether from local or municipal levels, federal-regional levels and at all levels defining the administrative systems and arrangements of the countries.
Philip Arthur Njuguna Mwanika, Researcher, Environmental Security Programme, ISS Nairobi
