ZAMBIA DRAFT NATIONAL POLICY ON ENVIRONMENT (2005): FORESTS

FORESTRY...

The Current Environmental Situation
It has become widely recognised that Zambia's wealth of natural and cultural resources are in danger of further widespread depletion and degradation, sometimes irreversibly as in the case of misuse of some soils. Concern for this worsening environmental situation prompted the need to create a National Policy on Environment. Recent studies (October-December 2004) carried out in all the provinces by the Ministry of Tourism Environment and Natural Resources' Policy Development Secretariat, the provincial and the National Situational Analysis Reports MTENR/UNDP 2005, confirmed the worsening environmental situation and that in relation to the economic sectors the following issues of prime importance should provide the baseline for formulation of the National Policy on Environment:

Forest Sector Current Situation
• Widespread forest clearance and degradation. • Forest degradation leading to reduced biodiversity. • Failure of local assessment and implementation of forest laws to prevent over harvesting. • Unplanned clearance for farmland. • Far too much uncontrolled annual burning. • Destructive methods of harvesting. • Unsustainable charcoal production requiring greater management inputs and awareness raising. • Fuel-wood demand increased and alternative energy not given sufficient attention at all levels. • As a consequence of inadequate forest management there is widespread loss of productivity, erosion, siltation, reduction in stream flow and other negative impacts verging in many places upon desertification. • Poor management of forest cover is probably contributing to climate change.

Private Sector and Community Participation
Strategies
• Train and re-orient extension officers in all line ministries and NGOs to facilitate community participation in natural resource management. • Return a significant portion of the benefits from sustainable utilization of natural resources on public and customary lands to the local authorities, local communities and chiefs whose collaboration is needed to conserve the resources. • Integrate local representatives into the decision-making process in order to empower local communities in the management of natural resources. • Provide incentives to the private sector to encourage their involvement in natural resource management. • Mobilise private sector resources to achieve environmental objectives through attractive pricing policy, contracts, leases and concessions. • Facilitate and empower chiefs and local authorities to monitor environment and natural resources management in their areas of jurisdiction

Conservation of Biological Diversity and Biosafety
Strategies
• Identify valuable areas of biodiversity, particularly outside protected areas, and in consultation with local communities, explore means of protecting such areas, including gazetting as protected areas, purchase of land-use rights or of conservation easements, especially where critical areas are concerned. • Ensure that programmes undertaken by the Departments of Forestry, Fisheries, and ZAWA under the Zambia Wildlife Act 1998, to protect biodiversity involve and provide benefits to local communities so that they are motivated to conserve the resources and use them in a sustainable manner. • In view of the extensive importance of biodiversity to the Nation, promulgate a separate Biodiversity Act to support existing legislation. • Promote eco-tourism as a means of conserving natural resources and biodiversity and of earning income, particularly for local communities. • Provide a mechanism for fair distribution of costs and benefits deriving from protected areas between central and local governments and local communities, bearing in mind costs as well as revenue. • Foster public support and encourage private investment in biodiversity conservation through public awareness campaigns and appropriate incentive schemes. • Establish and develop biodiversity networks, both national and international for information exchange and consultation. • Promote and strengthen activities of the national gene bank and SADC regional Plant Genetic Resources Centre at Mount Makulu, NISIR. • Provide alternative income generating activities as a means of assisting the conservation of biodiversity. • Extend the scope and capacity of the Pilot Environmental Fund for community-based environmental projects currently managed by the Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources to incorporate biodiversity conservation, nature-based tourism and new livelihood enterprises. • Adhere or conform to international biodiversity treaty obligations through systematic introduction of requisite enabling legislation that are relevant to Zambia's situation.

Key Economic Sector Measures
The Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources should establish the requisite partners in environmental care and management to see that a time bound Action Programme for implementation is developed and agreed. This will include legal, fiscal and institutional arrangements as well as a wide range of activities focusing on environmental care and sound environmental management spelt out in the National Policy on Environment and within the sphere of the economic development programmes for each of the different sectors. Partners in implementation will include government ministries, government departments and line agencies, the provincial and district administrations, statutory boards and para-statal organisations, nongovernmental organisations, the chiefs as traditional rulers, people's organisations, the private sector and the general public.

The Forest Sector
a) Objective
To manage the Nation's natural forest resources in a sustainable manner to maximize benefit to the Nation and especially forest dependent communities retaining their ecological integrity.
b) Guiding Principles
• Deforestation is a major factor in soil erosion, siltation of lakes, rivers, dams and other water bodies, loss of biodiversity and climate change. • The involvement of the private sector, NGOs and local communities in forestry is critical to improved management, conservation and sustainable utilization. • Promotion of private plantation and homestead forestry should be encouraged. • Community-based participation in the management of Forest Reserves, Protected Forest Areas and forests on customary lands shall be promoted. • Local communities that participate in the management of indigenous forest resources shall receive financial and other benefits from their sustainable utilization. • Inventorying and monitoring should be an integral part of sustainable forestry management. • Sustainable forest resource management and control of deforestation should best be enhanced on the basis of appropriate research, production forestry development and extension. • Appropriate subsidiary legislation and regulations at the district level are essential to effective implementation of forest policy.
c) Strategies
• Provide an enabling framework for promoting the participation of local communities, NGOs and the private sector in forest conservation and Joint Forest Management. • Establish appropriate incentives that should promote the effective contribution of Zambia's forest resources and on-farm trees to the alleviation of poverty, sustainable economic development and environmental protection. • Provide economic incentives and the necessary legal framework and technology to encourage and facilitate rural communities to introduce alternative sources of energy to gradually reduce reliance upon fuel wood and charcoal. • Take direct measures to control charcoal production and organise sustainable practices which include rehabilitation of seriously degraded woodland. • Promote development and dissemination of agro-forestry practices. • Promote dissemination of indigenous knowledge about the medicinal and other properties of Zambia's indigenous forest resources and where possible assist in marketing such knowledge for the benefit of the custodians of the knowledge. • Introduce marketing and pricing policy reforms that provide industrial fuel wood users with incentives to invest in tree planting and woodland management. • Ensure the sustainable utilization of forest resources by practicing conservation in the use of forest products, improving specifically the efficiency of fuel wood conservation, recycling paper through incentives and regulations and substituting fuel wood with alternatives such as paraffin, solar energy, biogas, electricity and coal where feasible. • Promote and support the conservation and protection of forest ecosystems and the growing of trees by individuals, companies, estates, local communities and authorities, including the integration of forests and trees into farming systems, soil conservation activities and land-use systems. • Involve local communities in afforestation and rehabilitation of bare, fragile or erosion-prone areas. • Have particular regard to protection and rehabilitation of evergreen riparian mushitu woodland, especially along upper river drainage lines. Assist communities to set up appropriate management institutions to control the use of forestry resources on customary land on a sustainable basis. • Promote forest conservation measures for civil works, including minimal tree destruction when constructing roads, prohibiting encroachment of protected areas. •Provide alternative income generating activities that should reduce pressure on forestry products such as the commercial use of Nontimber Forest Products. • Establish a forum where interested parties in forestry issues can share ideas. • Conduct well designed research programmes or adapt exogenous technologies to local conditions in order to generate usable technologies for the sustained management of planted and natural forest resources. • Revise and update the Forest Act in order to strengthen it in line with the National Forestry Policy and to promote participatory forest management and sustainable utilization of forest resources having particular regard for private sector and participation of women in all aspects of forest resource management.

• Continue the conservation and management of gazetted forestry reserves and prohibit encroachment into Protected Forest Areas.