President of WECZ to Legacy Director of Development

August 10.
I am the President of the Society and although there are major concerns about the development process for your proposed properties, the Society’s official position is to work with developers to achieve sustainable solutions.

... an adequate scoping for the EIA is crucial, but Monday is very short notice. To provide a constructive input and the right people in Livingstone on Monday will be difficult. We would greatly appreciate it if the meeting could be postponed a few days.

... the Society’s issues are twofold:

1) the development is in contradiction to both the World Heritage Site Convention and the park General Management Plan. While the latter was never formally approved, it is a consensus position accepted by all stakeholders – at considerable expense and thus must represent the planning format for the park until something better takes its place. To flout these regulatory structures undermines their validity everywhere; and
2) related to this we believe that to issue a TCA before consultation was inappropriate of ZAWA. A draft agreement subject to EIAs and Council planning approval fine, but to sign an agreement in these sensitive circumstances is not in the spirit of national park development and something many other developers would love to get. Although the Society does not pursue personal issues you are probably aware that talk on the street is of why the Chair of the TCZ and the brother of the Commercial Director of ZAWA have managed to obtain this approval so quickly – and we all need to be able to respond to these “chatter” issues constructively and positively.

Let me stress that the Society wishes to support a positive outcome to this situation and one that will benefit your development, but it is important that we can dialogue in an open and constructive manner. If you cannot change Monday’s arrangements so be it, but it would be useful to be able to meet outside that framework anyway.