THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG

answers to our lead questions of how biodiversity is synthesized and what is its place in the
entire national resource management regime in Kenya.
3.2 An analysis of national resources regimes in Kenya
As we noted earlier, regimes are social institutions composed of agreed upon rules, norms,
principles and decision making procedures that govern interactions for actors in specific areas.
Krasner makes this observation at an international level. He suggests that the definition of
international regimes has been used to explicitly refer to principles, norms, rules and decisionmaking
procedures in the area of international relations. 301
Resource regimes evolve over time and space. They are nurtured, grown and changed. They
persist and occasionally die but this doesn’t translate to mean that all regimes have an
indefinite life cycle. In order for us to make a meaningful analysis of the national resources
management regime in Kenya, we shall still use the institutional perspective on natural
resources as opposed to the micro economic or the ecological perspective. This will enable us
to differentiate resource regimes from the broader domain of human behavior and empirically
identify regimes through analysis of social conventions.
Young identifies three different approaches to use in doing a resource regime analysis. In one
such approach Young analyses the regime as a pervasive characteristic of the international
system. He advances his argument based on the economic and power relations that shape
nations. 302 Through his submission, Young seems to point out that: natural resource regimes
whether in Africa, Latin America or even Asia are in a way structurally linked to international
regimes under certain circumstances. In short, Young as a great proponent of structural
realism reasons and gives due recognition to the influence of international regimes in many
defined situations. 303 Young’s analysis is useful in helping us to synthesize the nature of
resource regimes in Kenya.
A critical look at the current resource management regime in Kenya inevitably displays these
traits. Kenya is a member to the conference of parties, a signatory to most of the international
environmental regimes and above all a signatory to the Convention to Biological Diversity
(CBD). Not forgetting to mention that Kenya hosts the headquarters of the United Nations
Environmental Protection and a hive for other environmental actors. In fact any efforts to delink
Kenya from this analysis would be self-defeating. But this should not be interpreted to
mean that Kenya employs the “best practices model” in her biodiversity behaviours. It only
helps us to make an assessment as to whether the globalcentric notion of biodiversity has
played a significant role in the biodiversity restoration efforts. The globalcentric notion of
biodiversity is strategically positioned in Kenya’s national resource management regime.
301
Krasner, Stephen.D .1983. International Regimes. New York:Cornell University Press.
302
Young, Oran .1996. Institutional Linkages in International Society: Polar Perspectives. Global Governace.21:
1-23.
303
Ibid.
60