مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد فرآیند خط مشی گذاری تغییر آب و هوا در کنیا – امرالد 2017

Conventional environmental policies are largely characterized by ‘top-down’ approaches. ‘Top-down’ approaches regard to higher authorities defining and deciding how things should work at the community level. ‘Top-down’ approaches are based on the assumption that national and the elite groups are able to design policies that will be implemented at the local level. Such approaches have given limited democratic space for the people who are affected at the local level. Most policies that have followed this approach to some extent have failed in a number of regions both in the ‘north’1 and ‘south’ during the late 1960 and throughout 1970s (Kamruzzaman, 2012). In the aftermath, democratic freedom of local communities to participate in the policy processes, a growth of social movements where the local communities and concerned parties come up with other means to rise against certain policies that affect them or may be of interest to them (Holmes and Scoones, 2000; Kamruzzaman, 2012). Such processes not only produce surprises and uncertainty but involve complex engagement of elements within a system (Ratter, 2013) Gaventa and Robinson (1999), (cited in Holmes and Scoones, 2000) argue that there are four ways through which local communities especially the ‘non-elite’ citizens are able to shape policy outcomes. The first is through ‘resistance’. Scott who studied how peasant and oppressed persons resist the dominating group argues that the oppressed do not speak their mind before the dominant group but rather find a way of advancing their discourse of concern among themselves through gossips which provides a platform for information sharing which may build up to social resistance (Scott, 1990a; Scott, 1990b). The second way is through community based action groups, social unions, social movements and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). These movements are important in creating public awareness of the issue at hand, mobilization of group resources and more important media awareness (Dalton et al., 2003). The third route is via formal representation through democratically elected representatives. These representatives become agents of the electorates and are entrusted to represent their interests. The final course is by way of an expanded democratic space where the greater ‘public’ is invited in consultation and decision making processes (Holmes and Scoones, 2000). This is an approach that has gained popularity in the last three decades.