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Africa Moyo Deputy News Editor
Zimbabwe has come up with a number of policies and legal instruments aimed at supporting biodiversity conservation, with all those policies expected to be passed by Cabinet before year end, Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Mangaliso Ndlovu has said.
He said this on Monday during a stakeholder consultation workshop in Harare on biodiversity in Zimbabwe, ahead of the Fifteenth Conference of Parties Meeting (CoP15) scheduled for December 5 to 17 in Montréal, the largest city in Canada’s Québec province.
“My ministry through its parastatals, ZimParks, Forestry Commission, Allied Timbers and EMA (the Environmental Management Agency) has over the years championed conservation projects and programmes that support biodiversity conservation and aim to restore nature’s biological balance,” he said.
“We have also promulgated various policies and legal instruments including those on the environment, wetlands policy and wetlands utilisation framework including gazetting all the country’s wetlands, our first ever Forest Policy, the Wildlife Policy, Community Based Natural Resources Management, Climate Bill principles, carbon credit trading framework policy, among others.
“I must further buttress that we are determined to have all these policies and legal instruments approved by Cabinet in 2022. The work is right on our hands, as we make these preparations.”
Minister Ndlovu said Zimbabwe has a great history in biodiversity and nature conservation, with over 30 percent of the country’s landmass under some form of protection for nature conservation such as national parks, gazetted forests and recreational parks.
A healthy environment and rich biodiversity, he said, were key elements for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals, sustainable social construction and coherent economic systems.
“Essentially, effective conservation of biodiversity is crucial for the maintenance of ecosystem processes and our survival.
“Zimbabwe is well endowed with various flora and fauna species, soil and agricultural biodiversity that are of immense conservation value to our national and local economy,” said Minister Ndlovu.
The survival of almost 70 percent of Zimbabwe’s 16 million people is hinged on natural resources. Globally, the World Economic Forum’s recent Nature Risk Rising Report indicated that over half of the world’s GDP (US$44 trillion) is highly or moderately dependent on biodiversity.
Minister Ndlovu said the benefits from the sustainable access to, and use of biodiversity and its components, could contribute significantly to Zimbabwe’s economy and consequently to the attainment of Vision 2030 of an empowered upper middle income society.
“Unfortunately, biodiversity is presently being lost at unprecedented rates largely due to human driven activities and the impact of climate change.
“In Zimbabwe, we celebrate human population growth and related increase in per capita consumption, only if we take care of biodiversity,” said Minister Ndlovu.
Key pressures driving biodiversity loss include over-exploitation of species, proliferation of invasive alien species, pollution and the challenges of wastes globally, climate change variability, loss of wetlands, veld fires, and especially the degradation, fragmentation and loss of habitats.
Minister Ndlovu said there was, therefore, need for transformational approaches and more scientific research to build a strong case for biodiversity to address the root causes of biodiversity loss.
The imperative to reduce the negative human impact on biodiversity is widely acknowledged, he added.
The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), agreed on at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, is one of the most widely ratified treaties in the world advocating for the conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources.
Zimbabwe became a signatory to this convention in 1995, and is therefore obliged to implement its provisions.
Minister Ndlovu said the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) aims at leveraging Zimbabwe’s competitive advantages, particularly with regards to the configuration of the country’s natural resource endowment.
Monday’s workshop, whose objective was to interrogate and deliberate on the elements of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), provides a strategic vision and a global roadmap for the conservation, protection, restoration and sustainable management of biodiversity and ecosystems for the next decade up to 2032.
The GBF was expected to be finalised and endorsed in October 2020 but was derailed following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Further, as parties concluded the second meeting of the Open Ended Working Group on the post-2020 GBF in Rome in February 2020, the world came to a halt due to Covid-19, and the CoP15 in Montreal is now expected to rescue and urgently endorse the GBF.
Discussions during Monday’s workshop sought to generate useful information and recommendations to enable the production of a high quality national position on the Post-2020 GBF.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s support enabled the holding of the workshop.
Online Reporter