Browsing by Author "Tesfaye, Etsegenet"

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    Exploring the State of Environmental Courts and Tribunals in Ethiopia: The Case of Addis Ababa City Administration
    (Addis Ababa University, 2021-02) Tesfaye, Etsegenet; Zeleke, Tesfaye PhD
    The objectives of this study were to explore the implementation of environmental protection laws under Federal regular courts in Addis Ababa. The research followed mixed research approach. The data was collected using descriptive research tool, questionnaire with close and open ended questions. And for the qualitative research design, semi structured interview was used to collect feedbacks from FFIC, FHC, EFCCC legal service directorate, AEPGDC attorney, AAU law school environmental law scholars(instructors). Courts play very significant role in attaining environmental justice and thereby, contribute to sustainable development. Despite the fact that their role is indispensable, regular court functioning in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia were not implementing the existing environmental laws and regulations that are set out to protect the environment. Different factors such as, awareness of the society to bring environmental cases to court, the regular court set up how it sees environment cases, lack of experts who have specialization on environment law, non-suitable procedural outlets to bring environment cases to court of law, the very dynamic nature of environment case summed up with the country’s desperate economic need let enforcement of environment law difficult. This exacerbates environment risks such as increased pollution, biodiversity loss, and lacks of implementation of Environmental Impact Assessment by giant industries. The study also assessed state of implementation of national environmental protection laws, tried to analyze the practices and the operation of regular courts in Addis regarding environment cases, assessed perception of legal experts on environmental court establishment and identified opportunities of establishment of environmental courts in Addis Ababa. Based on the analyzed data, existing environmental laws and regulations were found to be not enforced. Different factors such as non-suitability of the regular court setup, low level of societies awareness of their environmental rights, nonsuitable procedural out lets to initiate environmental dispute case to court were raised. Judges and public prosecutors almost unanimously supported the establishment of a Bench under the regular court structure. While both environment protection organs, opted for having environmental tribunal accountable to FFEPC thereby have designed draft proclamation by June 2020, AAU law school environment law instructors advised on the specialization whatever modality it will have.