Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

To avert environmental degradation, the governments of most nations have put in place environmental regulations to ensure sustainable development. But environmental laws can not solve the problem alone; communication is an important tool in ensuring environmental regulation and avoiding conflict during the process of environmental inspection. The aim of this paper was to study the role of communication in environmental inspection. Interviews were used as the principle method for data collection.

Results obtained revealed that lack of communication led to conflict between the environmental inspectors and the economic operators. Strategies were used by both the inspectors and their clients to avoid conflict or to avoid misunderstanding escalating in to conflict. It was also revealed that the clients saw the inspectors as having power of sanctioning them, and that trust existed between the inspectors and their clients. One other finding was that environmental inspections made use of participatory approach. This ensured that the opinions of both the inspectors and their clients were taken in to account during inspection thus making it possible for the exploration of both parties' perspectives