ENVIRONMENTAL SAFEGUARDS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Abstract

Environmental safeguarding defines the application of precautionary measures to ward off degradation to the environment and human health that may be occasioned during implementation of a project. The researcher indentified the key challenges of environmental flow policy was the transition from high-level aspiration to actual implementation. While many countries now have some form of high-level policy and legal recognition of environmental flows, implementation has proved a significant challenge. Lack of political will and stakeholder support hindered implementation in the sense that, policy changes alone didn’t result in implementation. Insufficient resources and capacity implementation could not be achieved without strong institutions with sufficient resources and capacity to carry it out. Institutional barriers and conflicts of interest due to environmental flows were inherently interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral. The research determined the significance of environmental safeguards for environmental sustainability. This study was exploratory in nature since the literature review and primary data were gathered from relevant documents published by individual researchers served as the main sources of data for this paper. The advent of sustainability in development science had led planners to apply evolving notions of environmental sustainability. Sustainability was regarded alternatively as the proper means and the proper end of urban development. The researcher recommended practical environmental safeguarding measures such as, introduction of corporate environmental policies and strategies and carrying out environmental impact assessments during project implementation phase which went a long way in forestalling environmental hazards for sustainability.