The Environmental Management Agency (EMA) has rejected the implementation of a housing development project in Greystone Park in Borrowdale, Harare, on the basis of the project being implemented in a wetland area.
This followed the commencement of a housing development project without the necessary Environmental licences in a clear wetland with obvious black clay soils and other undoubtable ecological indicators of a wetland area.
The Agency promptly reacted to this obviously environmentally illegal activity by issuing a ticket and an Environmental Protection Order (EPO) to the proponent to cease operations immediately, and to initiate the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process.
The proponent has since submitted a prospectus for the proposed project which the Agency has out rightly rejected on the basis of that the area is a wetland and the project is likely to result in irreversible ecological impacts with a high likelihood to also hugely impact on the socio- economic landscape.
To that end, the Agency is on record continuously calling upon planning authorities and would be developers to exercise due diligence in land allocation and land use planning so as not to interfere with fragile ecosystems or areas of ecological importance.
In the case of wetlands, the Agency would like to remind the planning authorities that the spatial distribution of wetlands in Zimbabwe has been identified through the National Wetlands Masterplan (2021) and wetland pieces in individual local authorities have been mapped and presented as specific wetland maps for those areas. As such, development plans should be influenced by the spatial distribution of these wetland pieces so as to prohibit development taking place on wetlands.
Over and above all, the Ministry of Environment, Climate and Wildlife through the EMA has since gazetted certain pieces of wetlands as Ecological Sensitive Areas (ESAS) as provided for in Section 113 of the Environmental Management Act(CAP 20:27), totalling an estimated area of 258 780.99ha as at the end of 2024, with the process still ongoing.
These are all concerted efforts to ring-fence wetlands as systems of ecological importance and to entrench the principles of conservation and wise use of wetlands as advocated for by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and our own national aspirations on wetland protection. Violating standing legal provisions on wetland management in Zimbabwe remains a punishable offence according to the Environmental Management Act as read with Statutory Instrument 7 of 2007, where an offender is liable to a fine not exceeding level 14 or imprisonment not exceeding two years or to both such fine and such imprisonment.
