Zambia Zambia wants to strengthen ESIA and set up a sound SEA system. But how to do this? WWF Zambia and the Zambia Environmental Management Agency jointly requested the NCEA to help diagnose needs and identify ways forward. An exploratory mission examined the legal and technical aspects. And especially how do the actors see their own and other’s roles? How could everyone play their roles more effectively? During a second visit to Lusaka, the NCEA continued to work with ZEMA on updating the ESIA regulations. The NCEA and WWF Zambia, ZEMA, CSO and government partners launched a new approach to reviewing ESIAs – one that can be applied even when time is short and no high-tech expertise is available. Multistakeholder discussions on how Zambia could work with SEA resulted in a broad consensus of the need to start with SEA. These were exciting weeks, full of variety! WWF Netherlands is now considering which of the resulting recommendations it will finance as part of the SRJS programme. Bart Geenen: “Our partners in Zambia have been working on ESIAs for years but have been much more successful since the cooperation with the NCEA started. WWF would typically focus on environmental impacts of the specific project. We are not ESIA specialists and now understand we should also focus on the ESIA system and processes. You do need to be aware of these things if you want to be effective. In Zambia, they are very impressed by the steps that have been taken together with government. The NCEA opens doors.” The coming years It is still early days, but after these sessions, the SRJS partners and governments in several countries asked for support to strengthen ESIA and SEA. In Madagascar, The Philippines and Tanzania, the desire to gain practical experience with SEA has stimulated the stakeholders to prepare for SEA to be applied to specific plans: they have requested the SRJS to assist and the NCEA to coach. In Madagascar and Zambia, the SRJS has resulted in government and SRJS partners becoming interested in jointly investigating strengthening the SEA and ESIA regulatory frameworks respectively. Will SRJS partners in other countries also request support in setting up SEA for their landscapes? The NCEA is waiting to see where the demand will arise, but is encouraged by these first initiatives. In a few years’ time we’ll see whether commitment for ESIA and SEA has grown and has helped to promote sound landscape management. Contact: Ms Gwen van Boven, Technical Secretary gboven@eia.nl 45
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