Understanding Environmental Policy Processes

* How are environmental policies created and once put to effect, why are they so difficult to change despite sometimes becoming detrimental to the environment they are set up to protect? * African environmental policy is largely controlled by Northern concepts of how the environment should be handled - are these Northern ideals best for Africa itself? * What can be done to make policy making more participatory This book offers a critical analysis of the "post-Rio consensus" on environment and development and questions the role of particular forms of internationalized elite scientific expertise. It poses the question of why certain understandings of environmental change stick with such tenacity. In exploring this the authors unravel the politics of knowledge surrounding policy making, looking particularly at Ethiopia, Mali and Zimbabwe and their land and soils management. The book also looks at prospects for more inclusive, participatory forms of policy making.