Urban Governance and Wetland Conversion in the City of Harare

Abstract

Wetlands have been critical in human life since the earliest civilization in Mesopotamia. The interaction interface between the two has been a point of discussion and confluence of research. Specifically how human actions impact the sustainability of such ecosystems.Using the case of Harare throughthe ‘governmentality’ lence, this study critically analysed governance technologies and their ability to regulate land use in a sustainable manner. Purposive sampling was used to select the organisations and pieces of legislation related to environmental governance. The study noted the existence of fragmented pieces of legislation relating to the environment which include the Regional Town and Country Planning Act, and the Environmental Management Act. Both of these pieces of legislation do not clearly refer to wetlands. The drawback is exacerbated by the lack of a National Wetlands Policy. All this has led to a number of environmentally irrational decisions by the governing authorities resulting in the loss of 55% of the City’s wetlands to development planning and infrastructure development. Residents have different forms of power which include; the law, lobbying, and adopting global rights to protect wetlands. These forms of power give residents differential levels of resistance to wetland conversion efforts. For example less sensitive developments can easily be averted through objections as spelt in the Regional, Town and Country Planning Act, while sensitive development have been resisted through lobbying. Lobbying worked in half of the cases it was applied while adoption of global rights worked for all the cases in which it was applied. The interesting observation is that lobbying was common in the affluent areas while in the low income areas residents seemed to be prone to subjugation. It is recommended therefore that awareness campaigns should be carried out by the Environmental Management Agency to equip residents with knowledge on the value of wetlands and the various forms of power that they can use to protect them against conversion. There is also need for re-alignment and where possible synchronisation of relevant pieces of legislation relating to environmental protection by the parliament through responsible government ministries. In this process effort should also be made to give more power to the lower levels of the governance hierarchy.