Environmental Awareness Creation Under Kenya's Environmental Diplomacy Pillar: An Objective With Potential For Mitigating Air Pollution
Abstract
This study aimed to assess the environmental awareness creation objective of Kenya's environmental diplomacy pillar, which aims to encourage public dialogue, awareness, and knowledge creation on environmental matters through national, regional, and international forums to reverse and halt environmental degradation. It focused on four areas encompassing the extent of environmental awareness creation, the institutions involved and the approaches adopted, the impact of participation in multilateral forums on the level of environmental awareness and consideration given to air pollution issues in development planning. The study adopted an exploratory research design targeting 130 key informants from institutions concerned with environmental issues and diplomacy in Kenya. Through descriptive statistics and conceptual content analysis of the data collected, this study found that despite the growing global attention to environmental degradation, there still existed gaps in meaningful environmental awareness creation in Kenya, with little success achieved and few visible outcomes. The study also established inconsistencies between Kenya's regional and international leadership in environmental matters and the actual status of air pollution in the country. It thus recommended that the Government of Kenya take proactive and context-based actions to enhance the public's care of the environment, develop and implement a robust environmental awareness creation framework to link actions at the various levels and introduce practical and specific metrics to ensure that actions taken result in measurable change in environmental behaviour. Kenya should also utilise its environmental leadership role to bolster environmental awareness.
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