(Source: Mohamed-Katerere 2001) Throughout much of Africa, the
interlinkages between institutions and within governance
processes are poorly developed. Developing an interlinkages
approach can improve opportunities for more effective regional
cooperation, inclusive policies, improved regional-national
synergies, and stronger and more sustainable partnerships.
International law and policy, at both the global and regional
levels, identifies motivations as well as an overall framework
for developing institutional interlinkages, as set out in Box 1.
These international law principles help to address problems of
unequal power between countries. One major and crosscutting
challenge for developing institutional linkages is the lack of
harmonization of environmental management approaches. Legal
systems in Africa are closely linked to their colonial past,
with different countries having English, French or Portuguese
legal systems. More specifically, in terms of environment,
common approaches have not been developed ac