An Assessment of the Environmental Impacts on Land Use and Land Cover Changes and Strategies of Reducing the Adverse Impacts: A Case of Eldoret Municipality, Uasin Gishu District, Kenya

Abstract

Land use and land cover changes are quite common in nearly all urban centres, but little has been done to reduce their impacts especially in the developing countries. The green belt policy is intended to check and prevent these problems but according to Harvey (1989), this is not the case.  Instead it contributes to spiraling increases in urban land values and adds to the problems of congestion by forcing development in existing urban centre. The study uses information gathered from the field to suggest alternative solutions to the problems brought by land use and land cover changes and urban expansion as a whole.  This can ensure the achievement of sustainable urban development in Eldoret town.  The study sought to identify environmental problems by analysing the changes and supplementing with other information collected from the field and suggests some of the ways of minimising these problems. Environmental problems related to land use and land cover changes were identified using various techniques. First, they were identified from doing a cross-classification analysis, which involved the running of a CROSS-TAB command from Database query of Analysis module in Idrisi for Windows. Some of the environmental impacts of land use and land cover changes from the study results include; Inadequate regulations, Inappropriate Regulations and Policies, Inadequate Infrastructure Capacity, Inadequate Environmental Information, Lack of Community Participation in Development Planning. It further suggests strategies that could be used to reduce the environmental impacts.

Keywords: Assessment, Environmental Impacts, Land Use, Land Cover Changes, Strategies, Eldoret Municipality