Moving forward in Zimbabwe - Brooks World Poverty Institute - The ...

Moving forward in Zimbabwe
Reducing poverty and promoting growth
Moving forward in Zimbabwe
Reducing poverty and promoting growth
CHAPTER 5:
Environment and development
5.1 Environment and development issues in
Zimbabwe, since 2000 and beyond
The current state of Zimbabwe’s environment is not known, as the
last State of the Environment Report was published in 1998. As
per international obligations, Zimbabwe started preparations for
its five-yearly State of the Environment Report for 1998 to 2004
by contracting teams of consultants, with funding from the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to draft the individual
chapters. Draft chapters were produced in 2005, but these have
not yet been finalised. What is known however is that by the time
the crisis emerged in 2000, Zimbabwe had made commendable
progress in resolving some of the major tensions between the need
to develop the country and care for the environment. In 1980 the
country had inherited environmental policies that gave privileged
access to natural resources to certain groups and sectors while
penalising others. Rural communities in communal lands were
criminalised for consumptive utilisation of certain natural goods
by a state that sought to protect the environment from people
rather that promoting sustainable use. Most of the interventions
to protect the environment targeted livelihood pursuits, especially
farming, mining, forestry and wildlife within communal lands.
Since the interventions were seen as interfering with how
people already living in marginal environments made a living, they
were often resented even though they were meant to benefit the
inhabitants of communal areas. 1 Some of the legislation was so
restrictive that if the state had attempted to enforce some elements,
most of the people in communal areas would have fallen foul of
the law. 2 The cost of looking after the environment in this way
was clearly unsustainable and up to a point the approach did not
meet the development aspirations of those who lived with nature,
nor the environmental protection desired by all. After some initial
continuity, in the mid 1980s, the post-colonial state sought to shift
its approach to the way it dealt with environment issues. The first
coherent response came in the form of a Natural Resources Strategy
paper supported by the International Union for Conservation of
Nature as part of multi-country initiatives in the region. Although
never formally presented to parliament it gave a reference point to
all on matters to do with natural resources and laid the foundation
for further initiatives. Key among these are the emergence of
community conservation in the late 1980s and production of
Zimbabwe’s take on sustainable development presented to the
UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in
1992. It was Zimbabwe’s response to the UNCED conference that
perhaps produced the first coherent response to the environmental
challenges. In the following sections we look at the environmental
and development issues with a focus on how the crisis affected
the progress that had been made in some of the local initiatives.
We also then consider institutional policy and institutional changes
and some of the ways to restore the balance that had begun to be
realised when the crisis started. Consideration is given to the policy
and institutional framework before the crisis.
5.2 Zimbabwe’s environmental policy and
institutional framework
The country still has no official policy document that outlines the
agreed broader intentions and aspirations on the environment. In
2003-04, the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, in collaboration
with the Institute for Environmental Studies, developed a draft
environmental policy through wide stakeholder participation and
consultations at all levels, including community level, and also
with different sectors and interest groups, such as industry and
resettled war veterans. The draft policy is comprehensive, covering:
maintaining environmental integrity; social and economic issues;
environmental management; organisational responsibilities and
institutional arrangements; and financing mechanisms. The vision
of the policy is to alleviate poverty and improve the quality of life
of the people of Zimbabwe and it acknowledges the necessity
to ensure the sustainability of benefits arising from use of the
environment. Although drafted in 2004, the policy has not yet been
officially adopted or launched. While it was approved by a cabinet
sub-committee almost a year ago, it still needs to be approved by
full Cabinet and has still not been presented to Parliament for
adoption. In the meantime, the Ministry of Environment and
Tourism has adopted it in anticipation of official endorsement.
While this has been going on, there were other areas of progress,
especially with respect to Environmental Impact Assessment Policy
and harmonisation of environmental laws.
Although a policy since the 1990s, the Environmental
Impact Assessment (EIA) became a legal requirement under the
Environmental Management Act. Clause 97 of the Act states that
no person shall carry out any project which affects the environment
without first having submitted an environmental impact assessment
prospectus and carrying out a full EIA if required. Under the Act,
periodic environmental audits of these projects are to be carried
out to ensure compliance. Furthermore, Clause 96 of the Act
requires that environmental management plans be developed
and submitted by ‘… any government agency, person or class of
persons that exercises functions, or engages in operations, which
may affect the environment or which involve the management
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