By Ndatenda Njanike
As Zimbabwe prepares to host the RAMSAR COP15 next year(2025), the Government has been encouraged to enact legislation for the protection of wetlands.
The meeting of the conference of contracting parties to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands(COP 15) will take place in July 2025 in the resort town of Victoria Falls.
Speaking during a Workshop last weekend organised by the Conservation Society of Monavale (COSMO), in conjunction with Birdlife Zimbabwe and Harare Wetlands Trust, environmental lawyer Fiona IIlif pointed out that though the country has an Environmental Act it was critical that a separate Wetlands Act be enacted to strengthen their protection.
“According to the Zimbabwean law when you sign up to an international convention you are supposed to domesticate that convention.
“ Unfortunately we do not have that specific Wetlands Act in Zimbabwe, so the RAMSAR sites do not have a specific additional care.
“So they should do in terms of or obligation to the international law, You could use the existing laws like the environmental law to implement the RAMSAR convention in practice but as you know in practice the RAMSAR Convention has not been implemented.
“And the RAMSAR convention says there should be wide use of wetlands that means maintaining the ecological characteristics of wetlands and maintaining it for water provision is a wise use in Harare’s context and also establishing nature reserves on wetlands and specifically nature reserves. “She said
Warren Park Constituency legislator Shakespear Hamauswa whose constituency holds the Monavale Wetlands assured his full support of wetlands protection and was prepared to put it to Parliament for discussion.
“ We will be championing the wetlands and when we are in Parliament you can give us key questions or key policy questions.
“ We can ask questions on Wednesday that are policy questions. We can also propose to say there is an act but there is no policy.
“ We can as well submit written questions if there are things you think must be answered by the government,” he noted.
The Ramsar Convention is an intergovernmental Treaty that provides the framework for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources. Zimbabwe is a signatory to the Treaty adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar in 1971 and came into force in 1975.
In Zimbabwe, wetlands cover 11 717.4km2 which translates to 3% of the total national surface area. According to the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) the available wetlands, only a fifth are in good or stable condition, 21% are stable, 18 % are severely degraded and 61% are moderately degraded.