Nkayi Rural District Council (Environmental and Natural Resources Conservation) By-laws, 2024

The Minister of Local Government and Public Works has approved new environmental and natural resources conservation by-laws for the Nkayi Rural District Council area. They are made under section 90 of the Rural District Councils Act and sit alongside the Environmental Management Act [Chapter 20:27].

The core mechanism is a Local Environmental Action Plan. Council must prepare one, put it on public exhibition, advertise where and when it can be inspected, invite objections within thirty days of notification, and consult the provincial planning officer, the provincial agriculture officer, the provincial environmental officer, the provincial warden, the provincial Mining Commissioner and anyone else with relevant expertise. If council departs from that advice it must tell the Provincial Council in writing and say why. The Provincial Council has thirty days to approve the plan or approve it with proposed amendments, and council can appeal to Cabinet through the Minister within thirty days if it disagrees. Once approved, the plan must be free to inspect at council offices and sent to every Ward Assembly.

The plan is what makes the rules bite on the ground. It designates grazing areas — where council can cap the number of livestock overall and per owner, say who may graze where, and set deadlines to destock. If livestock are found grazing outside a grazing area the owner is presumed to have allowed it, though proving all reasonable precautions is a defence, and a dipping card is treated as proof of custody of the cattle recorded on it. The plan also designates cultivation areas, where council can specify who may cultivate, what implements and crops are allowed, crop rotation, noxious weed control, contour ridging, wood lots, renewable energy crop areas and a date on which cultivation must stop until conservation measures are done.

Developers face real obligations. Any project needing an environmental impact assessment must consult council during the EIA process, involve council in public consultations with traditional leaders and the community, give council the consultant's details and proof of EMA registration, and lodge both the EIA report and the approved report with the EMA certificate. Starting operations without lodging those documents is an offence. EIA reports must be open to free public inspection at council offices. Anyone commercially exploiting natural resources — mining and other extraction expressly included — must lodge a rehabilitation plan and actually rehabilitate the environment before abandoning or closing the project.

The by-laws then run to forty sections covering burning of vegetation and fire prevention, invasive alien species, wetland protection, sleighs and farming implements, tree cutting, forest produce, removal of gravel, stones, river sand and pit sand, 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 and toxic chemicals, mining and mineral panning, and genetic resources.

Two important caveats for readers. First, throughout the sections that are available the penalty is expressed only as "a fine prescribed by council", with a written warning available for a first offence — no amount is stated in the by-law itself, so residents must ask the council for its current fine schedule. Second, the text available here is truncated partway through section 11, so sections 12 to 40 — including section 40, "Offences and penalties", where any general penalty scale would sit — are not covered above. Anyone who needs the tree-cutting, river-sand, brick-making or littering rules and the actual penalties must read the instrument itself.