6 min read
Why You Should Join LAPA
There is a version of this appeal that opens with a lion roaring across an empty savannah. Let me offer you a different scene, because it is closer to the truth.
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Articles
Commentary and analysis from the LAPA team.
6 min read
What the Label Doesn't Tell You
Pick up a tray of eggs at a supermarket in Nairobi. The packaging may tell you the grade, the count, sometimes the county of origin. What it will not tell you is whether the hen that laid them ever stood on anything but wire, or turned around, or opened her wings.
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7 min read
The Outbreak You Won't Read About
The human toll was serious. The economic toll was extraordinary. Gulf states closed their markets to Kenyan and regional livestock, and the ban outlasted the outbreak by years. Pastoralist households that had never heard of a phlebovirus lost their entire income because a buyer two thousand kilometres away could no longer be confident…
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6 min read
The Migration That Ended in a Land Registry
It has largely gone. The wildebeest population of that system collapsed over a few decades to a fraction of what it was.
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26 min read
Standing in Environmental Matters Under Kenyan Law
Environmental litigation is where Kenya's standing doctrine has travelled furthest and fastest. In 1989, the High Court held that Professor Wangari Maathai had no standing to challenge a development in Uhuru Park because she had suffered no injury peculiar to herself. Today, Article 70(2) of the Constitution provides in terms that an…
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22 min read
The Watching Brief in Wildlife and Environmental Matters
The watching brief occupies an odd position in Kenyan legal practice. It is universally understood, routinely deployed, frequently decisive — and almost entirely uncodified. No statute defines it. No rule of court prescribes its scope. It exists as a practice, sustained by judicial tolerance and, since 2014, by a statutory framework for…
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30 min read
Trial in Absentia in Wildlife Trafficking Cases
The pattern is familiar to anyone who has monitored wildlife prosecutions in Kenya. A seizure is made — a container of ivory at Mombasa, a consignment of rhino horn at JKIA. Low-level actors are arrested: the clearing agent, the driver, and the porter. Investigation eventually identifies the organiser. Charges are laid. The organiser is…
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