Gwanda City (sic) Council (Environmental and Natural Resources Conservation) By-laws, 2024

The Minister of Local Government and Public Works has approved comprehensive environmental and natural resources conservation by-laws for the Gwanda City Council area.

The by-laws are built around an environmental action plan the council must prepare under section 95 of the Environmental Management Act. Preparing it requires public exhibition of the draft, public notices, a thirty-day window for inhabitants to object, and consultation with the provincial planning officer, the provincial agriculture officer, the provincial environmental officer, the provincial warden, the provincial Mining Commissioner and other interested experts. Where the council departs from that advice it must tell the Provincial Council why. The approved plan goes to the Provincial Council, which has thirty days to approve it or propose amendments; if the council disagrees it may appeal to Cabinet through the Minister. Once approved, the plan must be available free for inspection and sent to every Ward Assembly.

The plan can then fix specific controls. For grazing areas: how many livestock may graze, which owners or communities may use which area, per-owner limits, deadlines for destocking, and conservation measures. Livestock found grazing outside a designated area is presumed to have been let there by its owner, unless the owner proves reasonable precautions were taken, and a dipping card is treated as proof of how many cattle a person controls. For cultivation areas: who may cultivate, which implements and crops, crop rotation, noxious weed clearance, contour ridging, woodlots and renewable energy crop areas, and dates on which cultivation must stop until conservation works are done.

Developers face real obligations. Any project needing an environmental impact assessment must consult the council during the process, involve it in public meetings with traditional leaders and the community, name and prove the registration of the consultant used, and give the council both the EIA report and the approved report with the EMA certificate. Starting operations without lodging those documents is an offence. Anyone commercially exploiting natural resources — mining and extraction expressly included — must lodge a rehabilitation plan before abandonment or closure and must actually rehabilitate the site, with the council monitoring alongside EMA. Where an owner will not do environmental works, the council may do them and recover the cost.

**On penalties.** Every offence provision reached in the available text — grazing outside a designated area, ignoring the cultivation plan, breaching a conservation plan, failing to lodge EIA documents, failing to rehabilitate a site — carries only "a fine prescribed by council". No amount appears in the by-laws themselves, so the duty is enforceable but the price of breaking it has to be found in the council's own schedule of charges. For grazing, cultivation and conservation breaches, the by-laws allow the council to give a first-time offender a written warning instead of a fine.

**On completeness.** The extract available for this summary was cut off at the extraction limit at section 12 of 40. The arrangement of sections shows what is not covered here: burning of vegetation and fire prevention, invasive alien species, wetland protection, the environment committee, sleighs, tree cutting, forest produce, gravel, stone, river sand and pit sand extraction, brick making, water source protection, biodiversity, commercial timber logging, wildlife and indigenous plants, fencing, air pollution, solid and effluent waste, waste management plans and enterprises, refuse removal, waste receptacles, landfills, littering, hazardous substances, mining and mineral panning, genetic resources, and the general offences and penalties section 40 with its Schedule of invasive alien species. Anyone relying on those provisions must read S.I. 24 of 2024 in full.

A drafting caveat. The gazette header cites [CAP. 29:13], the Rural District Councils Act, while the enacting words correctly invoke section 227 of the Urban Councils Act [Chapter 29:15]. Several definitions also read as if lifted from a rural district council template — grazing areas are described as set aside "by the Rural District Council", and "plan" is defined by reference to communal and resettlement land — which sits oddly in by-laws for a city council area.