Land and Communities Programme
The Land and Communities Programme came in the wake of the land reform programme in Zimbabwe. It seeks to encourage local communities that have access to land to manage, use and control the land and natural resources that are located within their localities in a sustainable manner while ensuring their tenure rights. The communities are also encouraged to conserve the environment so that they can reap maximum rewards from the land and its resources. The programme seeks to facilitate dialogue on the land question and natural resources management from a social, economic and political perspective. The major activities under this programme are research and advocacy
Legislative Environmental Representation Project
Under the Land and Communities Programme, ZELA has been implementing a research and advocacy project to promote the role of parliamentarians in natural resources management. It forms part of an African-wide research and advocacy initiative by the World Resources Institute (WRI) with seven policy research and environmental advocacy organizations in East and Southern Africa. The project, called the Legislative Representation and the Environment (Legislative Environmental Representation) is designed to encourage legislators in Africa to represent the environmental and natural resource interests of their rural constituencies. It is aimed at developing a better understanding of the incentives and disincentives of legislative representation and to identify structural and procedural reforms to strengthen these fundamental responsibilities. The project findings and recommendations will contribute to the continuing debates on democratization, rural development, and environmental management and capacity building to ensure that legislators meet their environmental representation roles. The legislature can be defined as a template for public participation in decision-making through representation. The legislature is an important institution that should link people with the government. It is supposed to be a forum for people to air their views through their representatives to the government. ZELA has already published a book on Legislative Environmental Representation in Zimbabwe. The project has also enabled ZELA to work closely with Parliament on different topical environmental issues affecting communities.
|
|
