Environment conservation proves tough call

The country’s natural resources have been systematically depleted and the spectre of their exhaustion is seen posing serious danger to economic revival.
While a decade of economic decay has exerted pressure on the environment as well as pushing marginalised communities into abject poverty, conserving what is left of the country’s thinning natural resources is proving to be a tough call.
The Prime Minister’s Office admitted as much last week.
“It (the environment) is in critical danger, with serious and multi-faceted negative consequences,” said Gorden Moyo, the Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office. “Rural communities, in particular, are more vulnerable to depletion of the country’s natural resources. Environmental protection is thus crucial in relation to sustainable development and poverty reduction.”
Moyo said this while addressing delegates at a conference that zeroed in on four key issues: land tenure, forests and forest management, wildlife and land use and the environment.
Hosted by the European Commission, the conference sought to craft strategies that could save Zimbabwe’s natural resources from extinction.
Charles Jonga, the director of the community-based Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) said: “Zimbabwe strongly supports the principle of sustainable use of its natural resources . . . however, bio-diversity can only be conserved when it serves the interests of the people who live with it, when such people have a voice, recourse, and incentives to benefit from their investments of knowledge, time and labour.”
While most of Zimbabwe’s rural people depend on natural resources for their livelihood, there is a lack of knowledge on optimal and sustainable use of these in terms of diversity of uses, value adding processes and technologies. As such, getting people to participate in conserving the environmental has not been easy.
Jonga said attempts to save the environment may not succeed unless communities start to perceive those efforts as serving their economic and cultural interests. All round, there is evidence of increasing environmental degradation in Zimbabwe through over-harvesting of both renewable and non-renewable resources.
Veld fires, poaching of wildlife, de-forestation, over-fishing, unsustainable mining practices, land degradation, siltation, poor sanitation and improper waste disposal are some of the ills ruining the country’s environment.
Presenting a paper entitled “Land, Tenure, Property Rights, Governance and Prospects for Sustainable Development”, Professor Mandivamba Rukuni, the director of the Wisdom Afrika Leadership Academy, said the challenges facing Zimbabwe in conserving its environment are not unique because “Africa is still up for grabs”, creating problems for many countries on the continent as natural resources, including land, are looted by local State elites as well as foreigners.
“The 1884 Berlin Conference succeeded in dividing Africa in several ways: physically, culturally, spiritually and 125 years later, no African country has a comprehensive land policy, which has resulted in land conflicts escalating by the day all over Africa and the nature of conflicts is becoming more violent,” said Rukuni.
After independence, many African countries faced the dilemma of development when the “sacredness of property rights and free enterprise” excluded the majority who did not have any property to defend.
Rukuni identified four key issues making up a basket of secure land tenure rights that unify all land under one legal framework as the best solution to preserving natural resources.
The basket comprises use rights, transfer rights, exclusion and inclusion rights and enforcement rights as the set of privileges that empower custodians of any land and resources as well as enabling and encouraging individuals and communities to conserve their natural resources.
Although the country has been promoting accountability through organisations such as the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA), which uses the law as a tool to support environmental justice and governance as well as sustainable use of natural resources, there have been major challenges such as the non-recognition and domestication of economic, social, cultural and environmental rights as human rights under the Constitution of Zimbabwe.
There is also limited adjudication on economic, social, cultural, environmental rights by the judiciary and the implementation and enforcement of environmental laws and policies.
At the core of these challenges is the influence of politicians and private sector players who often marginalise and manipulate the poor in accessing and controlling land, minerals, forests, wildlife, water and other valuable natural resources.
The current unsustainable environmental degradation and looting of Zimbabwe’s resources is now so deep-rooted that even the Environmental Management Agency (EMA), established in 2007 in terms of the country’s 2003 Environmental Management Act (Chapter 20:27), is now nothing more than a toothless bulldog.
EMA says it faces internal challenges that compromise service delivery. EMA also cites the human resources shortfall; inadequate resources such as equipment, transport and budgetary constraints; general resistance by public to pay environmental fees, levies, licences and trivialisation of environmental crime.
For the country’s National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, all the gains it has made over the years “are rapidly being eroded by severe under-capitalisation, cash flow problems and consequent inability to monitor field operations and activities of the wildlife industry” resulting in increased poaching.
Bringing back sanity into the country after years of lawlessness is undoubtedly a tall order for any authority, but a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first simple step.
The Ministry of Education, Sports, Arts and Culture is planning to include in its curricula environmental and conservation issues to instill a sense of pride in the country.