Assesses the scope and performance of politics, policies and planning in environmental and natural resources management in Eastern and Southern Africa, with chapters that analyze the experiences in nine countries in the region and that highlight a lack of policies, a lack of resources to effectively implement policies, fragmented policies or agencies' mandates, incoherent overall approaches, a lack of participation in policy formulation and subsequent ownership of policies, and other constraints that have plagued development efforts; the belief that understanding the impediments to formulating and implementing adequate policies will help in tearing down these barriers; and the importance of developing, polishing, adapting and implementing policies and instruments in a way that does justice to the specifics of the contexts in which they are to re applied. The chapters are titled: "Environmental planning, policies and politics in Eastern and Southern Africa", "National environmental management in Ethiopia: In search of people's space", "National resource management policies in Kenya: The politics within", "Environmental management in Malawi: Lessons from failure", "Environmental management in Lesotho: The limitations of legal instruments", "Effectiveness of environmental planning in Sudan", "National environmental policies in Tanzania: Processes and politics", "Environmental management in Uganda: A critique", "Environmental conservation planning in Zambia", and "Desertification and environmental management in Botswana".