Governance bottlenecks are slowing Kenya’s sustainability progress: How to break them

The ‘say-do gap’ in sus­tain­able travel & tour­ism is not only an issue in con­sumer decision-mak­ing and cap­it­al alloc­a­tion. It is also an insti­tu­tion­al, bur­eau­crat­ic, and polit­ic­al problem.

As Doreen Nyam­weya has dis­covered through her exper­i­ence in loc­al gov­ern­ment in Kenya, pro­gress towards sus­tain­ab­il­ity is pos­sible, but nev­er swift nor perfect.

It’s a “Good Tour­ism” Insight. [You too can write a “GT” Insight.]

Sustainability is political before it is technical

Like many sus­tain­ab­il­ity pro­fes­sion­als, I entered pub­lic ser­vice believ­ing that sci­en­tific­ally sound policies, logic, and tech­nic­al expert­ise would nat­ur­ally drive progress. 

I was wrong. I quickly real­ised that sus­tain­ab­il­ity is polit­ic­al before it is technical.

My exper­i­ence work­ing with a loc­al gov­ern­ment in Kenya revealed how struc­tur­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity chal­lenges play out in practice. 

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Implementation continues to lag ambition

Kenya has posi­tioned itself as a region­al lead­er in sus­tain­ab­il­ity, with ambi­tious green energy invest­ments and nation­al cli­mate com­mit­ments aimed at build­ing resilience. 

The bar­ri­er to sus­tain­ab­il­ity is no longer primar­ily tech­nic­al. Kenya already pos­sesses the expert­ise, policies, and tech­no­lo­gic­al innov­a­tions neces­sary to sup­port a green­er trans­ition across mul­tiple sec­tors, yet imple­ment­a­tion con­tin­ues to lag ambition. 

A 2025 CSIS (Centre for Stra­tegic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies) report high­lights Kenya’s struggle with per­sist­ent imple­ment­a­tion gaps between high-level policy ambi­tion and the prac­tic­al exe­cu­tion for resi­li­ence building.

The great­er hindrance lies with­in gov­ernance sys­tems that slow coordin­a­tion, weak­en account­ab­il­ity, and delay exe­cu­tion across all levels of gov­ern­ment. Polit­ic­al cycles, frag­men­ted decision-mak­ing struc­tures, incon­sist­ent policy enforce­ment, and com­pet­ing devel­op­ment pri­or­it­ies con­tin­ue to shape the pace of sus­tain­ab­il­ity integration.

As Kenya accel­er­ates this trans­ition, the con­ver­sa­tion must move bey­ond innov­a­tion to con­front the insti­tu­tion­al real­it­ies determ­in­ing wheth­er sus­tain­ab­il­ity goals are achievable. 

These gov­ernance real­it­ies are espe­cially vis­ible with­in sus­tain­able travel & tour­ism ini­ti­at­ives, where con­ser­va­tion goals, com­munity expect­a­tions, and loc­al polit­ic­al interests fre­quently inter­sect; like in the case of the Amboseli Nation­al Park han­dover to Kaji­ado County, where man­age­ment is expec­ted to cham­pi­on com­munity-cent­ric tour­ism and end a his­tor­ic­al injustice.

As I have wit­nessed, even the strongest sus­tain­ab­il­ity strategy can col­lapse if it does not sur­vive depart­ment­al zero-sum budget battles or shift­ing polit­ic­al interests. Hence, inside many gov­ern­ment offices, logic alone rarely determ­ines outcomes. 

At some point, sus­tain­ab­il­ity itself can cease to be the imme­di­ate pri­or­ity. Com­pet­ing insti­tu­tion­al interests take pre­ced­ence. Adapt­ab­il­ity becomes a high­er-order skill than tech­nic­al expert­ise alone.

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Sustainability is a language problem

With­in many gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions, sus­tain­ab­il­ity is per­ceived as expens­ive. To move sus­tain­ab­il­ity from the­ory to prac­tice, the vocab­u­lary itself must change.

Dis­cus­sions centred on envir­on­ment­al ter­min­o­logy or car­bon off­set­ting tar­gets rarely gain trac­tion in polit­ic­al envir­on­ments focused on the pub­lic mood and elect­or­al viab­il­ity. The con­straint is rarely about a lack of aware­ness; it is a clash of incentives.

Long-term con­ser­va­tion pro­jects fre­quently require polit­ic­al lead­ers to exchange imme­di­ate polit­ic­al cap­it­al for bene­fits that may only become vis­ible years later. In cur­rent elec­tion cycles, this is often a los­ing trade. In many cases, vis­ible infra­struc­tur­al pro­jects are pri­or­it­ised because they gen­er­ate imme­di­ate pub­lic recog­ni­tion and elect­or­al advantage.

I learnt this firsthand when dis­cuss­ing sus­tain­ab­il­ity ini­ti­at­ives with col­leagues whose pri­or­it­ies were dom­in­ated by employ­ment con­cerns, pub­lic ser­vice deliv­ery, and vis­ible devel­op­ment out­comes. Con­ver­sa­tions became more pro­duct­ive when sus­tain­ab­il­ity was framed not as cli­mate action alone, but as tour­ism rev­en­ue pro­tec­tion, cost sav­ings, or long-term eco­nom­ic resi­li­ence. This has changed how I approach policy conversations.

As a res­ult, sus­tain­ab­il­ity experts often spend more time under­stand­ing power dynam­ics and insti­tu­tion­al pri­or­it­ies than refin­ing tech­nic­al policy design.

You rarely suc­ceed by simply being ‘right’. Pro­gress comes from identi­fy­ing the indi­vidu­als who per­ceive the status quo as a threat to their own interests, and align­ing sus­tain­ab­il­ity goals with their incentives.

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Institutional change depends on trust

Gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions do not respond to dis­rup­tion in the same way private sec­tor organ­isa­tions do. Dur­ing inter­de­part­ment­al engage­ments, I noticed tech­nic­ally viable pro­pos­als mov­ing slowly, not because stake­hold­ers fun­da­ment­ally opposed them, but because there was insuf­fi­cient insti­tu­tion­al trust behind the people advan­cing them.

Evid­ently, rela­tion­ships mattered as much as evid­ence. Real change requires buy-in from stake­hold­ers who have already wit­nessed repeated waves of ‘innov­a­tion’. Oth­er­wise, pro­pos­als that lack this kind of sup­port are approached with scepticism.

Without trust, even well-designed policies become trapped in pro­ced­ur­al slow­downs. At that point, weapon­ising the tech­nic­al com­plex­ity of sus­tain­ab­il­ity becomes ineffective.

If stake­hold­ers are hes­it­ant to sup­port a pro­ject dir­ectly, imple­ment­a­tion can be slowed by exten­ded admin­is­trat­ive and review pro­cesses, in the guise of effect­ive governance.

Build­ing social cap­it­al there­fore becomes vital to imple­ment­a­tion. In prac­tice, this entails enga­ging in trade-offs. It means sup­port­ing broad­er insti­tu­tion­al pri­or­it­ies along­side sus­tain­ab­il­ity goals, build­ing good­will with my col­leagues that may later strengthen insti­tu­tion­al back­ing for sus­tain­ab­il­ity ini­ti­at­ives when res­ist­ance inev­it­ably emerges.

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Community voice is the best form of leverage

Com­munity par­ti­cip­a­tion remains one of the strongest forms of lever­age avail­able to sus­tain­ab­il­ity advoc­ates. It cre­ates legit­im­acy, which in turn gen­er­ates polit­ic­al pres­sure that insti­tu­tions can­not eas­ily ignore. It shifts sus­tain­ab­il­ity from agenda item to polit­ic­al priority.

The con­servancy man­age­ment mod­el in Kenya (the 2016 Com­munity Land Act) estab­lishes a leg­al frame­work that gives com­munit­ies access to leg­al land rights and act­ive par­ti­cip­a­tion in mak­ing decisions on land alloc­a­tion and use. Through loc­al par­ti­cip­a­tion, con­ser­va­tion dia­logues have shif­ted from gov­ern­ment impos­i­tion on com­munity lands to sup­port­ing com­munity con­servancy development.

Lead­ers will act when reforms carry social approv­al and repu­ta­tion­al con­sequences. But sus­tain­able reform is rarely achieved through indi­vidu­al effort alone. Col­lect­ive respons­ib­il­ity strengthens imple­ment­a­tion, dis­trib­utes risk, and builds resi­li­ence. Long-term imple­ment­a­tion depends on cooper­a­tion between gov­ern­ment agen­cies, com­munit­ies, civil soci­ety organ­isa­tions, and private-sec­tor act­ors who col­lect­ively view reform as beneficial.

I often wit­nessed loc­al par­ti­cip­a­tion fun­da­ment­ally change the tra­ject­ory of sus­tain­ab­il­ity dis­cus­sions. When com­munit­ies artic­u­lated how envir­on­ment­al degrad­a­tion dir­ectly affected live­li­hoods, tour­ism income, water access, or loc­al eco­nom­ic sta­bil­ity, sus­tain­ab­il­ity con­ver­sa­tions became more polit­ic­ally urgent and less theoretical.

To lever­age this poten­tial, for­ums must be cre­ated in which loc­al stake­hold­ers can pitch solu­tions to the admin­is­tra­tion and par­ti­cip­ate dir­ectly in decision-mak­ing. Inclus­ive engage­ment builds trust, improves trans­par­ency, and cre­ates shared respons­ib­il­ity for smooth imple­ment­a­tion. In the end, this reduces gov­ern­ment scep­ti­cism toward reform efforts. And the sus­tain­ab­il­ity advoc­ate is no longer the only voice in the room.

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Sustainability is an iterative process, not a destination

Sus­tain­ab­il­ity is an incre­ment­al pro­cess rather than a fixed point of arrival.

Many sus­tain­ab­il­ity experts anti­cip­ate imple­ment­ing per­fect sus­tain­ab­il­ity policies and mod­els on day one. How­ever, gov­ernance real­it­ies rarely accom­mod­ate per­fec­tion. Over time, you notice that ‘per­fect’ is the enemy of the ‘pos­sible’. Small, incre­ment­al wins are the found­a­tion for broad­er struc­tur­al change.

While pro­gress may appear slow, these smal­ler vic­tor­ies help build insti­tu­tion­al famili­ar­ity, polit­ic­al con­fid­ence, and long-term accept­ance of sus­tain­ab­il­ity prac­tices with­in gov­ern­ment systems.

Advan­cing sus­tain­ab­il­ity with­in gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions is not about win­ning a single argu­ment. It is about main­tain­ing pro­fes­sion­al integ­rity, nav­ig­at­ing insti­tu­tion­al real­it­ies, and con­sist­ently refram­ing the con­ver­sa­tion until ‘sus­tain­ab­il­ity’ is no longer treated as a niche con­cern, but as part of every­day governance.

The sweep­ing paradigm shift prom­ised in sus­tain­ab­il­ity bro­chures may nev­er fully mater­i­al­ise. But repla­cing ideal­ism with strategy offers some­thing equally import­ant: a seat at the table where long-term decisions about devel­op­ment and gov­ernance can be negotiated.

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What do you think? 

Share your thoughts in a com­ment below about sus­tain­able tour­is­m’s polit­ic­al and insti­tu­tion­al ‘say-do gap’, espe­cially if you are a stake­hold­er in Kenya. All per­spect­ives are wel­come because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

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About the author

Doreen Nyam­weya, Tour­ism Officer in Nyamira County, Kenya, is a sus­tain­able tour­ism spe­cial­ist and a stu­dent and advoc­ate of respons­ible tour­ism management. 

Ms Nyamweya’s areas of expert­ise include tour­ism research, des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment, sus­tain­ab­il­ity assess­ment, product devel­op­ment, and respons­ible tour­ism marketing. 

Featured image (top of post)

Gov­ernance bot­tle­necks are slow­ing Kenya’s sus­tain­ab­il­ity pro­gress: How to break them. A Gem­ini-gen­er­ated image. “GT” added the words.

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