ZAWA and NHCC decline to meet...

At a recent meeting of the Natural Resources Consultative Forum steering committee the matter of Governments unwillingness to follow the advice of the NRCF to ban all elephant sport hunting was discussed; it was also agreed that the conservation of the Victoria Falls World Heritage Site required NRCF’s urgent attention, and that all stakeholders should address its future. It was decided to hold a preliminary meeting with the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA), the National Heritage Conservation Commission (NHCC), the Environmental Council of Zambia (ECZ), members of the Livingstone branch of the Wildlife and Environmental Conservation Society (WECSZ) and other individuals willing to take part in a preliminary discussion. ZAWA and NHCC declined to attend and the Chairman of the NRCF therefore cancelled the meeting.

A private luncheon was therefore held by members of the core team - some of whom had travelled jup from Livingstone, who had fought against the alienation of part of the Mosi oa Tunya National Park and the development thereon of an 18 hole golf estate, a decision being made to pursue contacts and the support of the World Monuments Fund and the World Heritage Fund - as well as UNESCO and IUCN.

The first meeting of the Natural Resources Consultative Forum took place in 2005. The NRCF was supported by the Zambia Government/Danida Natural Resource Management (NRM) Component. With Phase 1 of the NRCF now completed – and the original second phase aborted; what is required is for a revised Phase 2 project to commence i.e. the attainment of a fully operational state having the main development objective within the NRM component of improving rural livelihoods and biodiversity conservation, but being guided by the National Policy on Environment. This is now taking place, further financial support from Danida being shortly forthcoming.

NRCF was envisaged as a neutral platform for stakeholder participation in the management of natural resources, particularly policy formulation. The NRCF is member driven, and promotes the transfer of technical information within the sector. The deliveries of the NRCF are advisory notes encapsulating stakeholder issues and concerns, addressed to the MTENR Permanent Secretary. Issues discussed by the NRCF, many of them of a cross-cutting nature, includes all the relevant agencies and sectors that have a bearing on the functioning of MTENR and its core responsibilities to both Government, the legislature and the nation as a whole. The development objective of NRCF was to provide national policy goals – within a supporting technical framework, on the sustainable use and conservation of Zambia’s natural resources, with the immediate objective being to provide an organization able to deliver such an objective. However the production of the National Policy on Environment, the final draft of which was produced in May 2005, has already provided the national policy goals – albeit, correctly, of a more holistic nature.