By NATION REPORTER
THE Centre for Environment Justice (CEJ) has hailed government’s decision to cease mining operations in lower Zambezi national park.
Maggie Mwape, the CEJ executive director said the decision by government through Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA) to stop mining activities in Lower Zambezi National Park was good because of non-compliance to conditions by Mwembeshi Resources Limited.
She said while the development was not a substantive stoppage of mining operations, it was an indication of government’s seriousness in upholding legality in mining.
“The Lower Zambezi mining case has been a controversial case of irregularities, procedural improprieties, and political manipulations in relation to Environmental Impact Assessment – EIA approvals in Zambia,” Ms Mwape said.
Ms Mwape said the sensitivity of the Park’s location and the fragility of the environment in which the mine was to be established increases the controversy around the EIA approval.
She said legal scholars in Zambia were on record having analysed the subjective lacunas in the Zambian EIA regulatory rules that give rise to such controversies as the Lower Zambezi mining saga.
Ms Mwape said while CEJ applauds the minister and tourism for having taken the active step to ensure sanity in the process of establishing the mine, the organisation was still of the view that more needs to be done regarding the Lower Zambezi mining saga. “The history of mining in Zambia dates from as far back as the 1920s in the colonial era where public participation and consultation were not policy nor legal matters. From 1920s to date, it is contestable that mining in this country has pulled local populations out of their abject poverty. We are ready to review any case studies that may prove us wrong in this assertion, so we may use it in justification of the Lower Zambezi mining. All that history of mining in Zambia has shown us since the 1920s is the story of national benefits versus local costs, i.e., while the state declares the nation’s benefits from mineral resources exploitation, the local communities under whose land those resources are buried continue to wallow in abject poverty,” Ms Mwape said.
She said the history of mining in Zambia did not show any positive socioecological impacts even after closure.
Ms Mwape said Kabwe has been turned into a monument of testimony to how mining has degraded the environment, dust emissions, air pollution, water contamination, land degradation and displacement of local communities was all the narrative that history of mining in Zambia brought to the fore. She hoped that the compliance order issued government and ZEMA would provide stakeholders with ample time to answer several questions.
Ms Mwape said the political manipulations of the EIA processes at the expense of thorough consultation and public engagements from the beginning of the matter left questions.
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