Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association Wildlife Programming
One of the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA)’s areas of programming under its current strategic plan is wildlife, which falls under the Land and Natural Resources Programme. However, apart from some work that was done during the formative years of the organization under the then Transboundary Natural Resources Management Programme (TBNRM), nothing much has been done on this very important sector which is integral to ZELA’s work on natural resources governance. The good news is that this is about to change.[1]
Ongoing Work
ZELA is partnering with the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) under a European Union (EU) funded Project "Partnership for improved anti-poaching and compatible land use in community lands of the Lower Zambezi Mana Pools Transboundary Conservation Area". In the partnership ZELA is looking at three areas:
- Providing legal support to Mbire Rural District Council in the development of a community wildlife conservancy in wards 1, 2 and 11
- Illegal wildlife trafficking
- Supporting the development of a productive and sustainable fisheries sector in the Lower Zambezi
Under the Zimbabwe Resilience Building Fund (ZRBF), which is being implemented in Kariba, Binga and Mbire Rural District Councils (RDCs), ZELA is partnering with Action Aid International Zimbabwe on Human and Wildlife Conflict (HWC) issues. To that end, a stakeholders national dialogue workshop on HWC was convened in September 2018. Its objectives were to discuss the major causes of the conflicts and the socio-economic impacts between human and wildlife, the need for stakeholders to come up with possible solutions to the HWC challenges and the engagement of policy makers and various stakeholders on HWC issues.
