Advancing the Right to a Healthy Environment for Climate Action in Zimbabwe Through a Human Rights-Based Approach
摘要
The normative framework on climate change in Zimbabwe is still developing. Following its ratification of the Paris Agreement in 2015, Zimbabwe adopted policy instruments to meet its international obligations. These policy instruments include the Climate Policy of 2016, the National Climate Change Response Strategy (2015), the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) Roadmap for Zimbabwe (2019), the Zimbabwe Long-term Low Gas Emission Development Strategy (2020–2050), the National Environmental Policy and Strategy (2009), among others. The government’s approach is to reduce the risks associated with the impacts of climate change through mitigation and adaptation measures without compromising national economic development. These policies also recognise the importance of achieving “economically sustainable development” although the implementation mechanisms fall short, with evidence of loopholes in programmes that perpetuate environmental degradation, climate vulnerabilities, and human rights violations. Consequently, the constitutional protection of the right to a healthy environment offers an opportunity to examine the national climate change policy framework from a rights-based perspective. This chapter explores the constitutional environmental right as a sine qua non for climate action in Zimbabwe and the measures needed to ensure that a rights-based approach is adopted into the existing climate change normative framework. It provides an overview of the climate change and human rights discourse to establish the basis for a rights-based approach to climate action in Zimbabwe. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the importance of employing Zimbabwe’s constitutional environmental right to introduce a rights-based approach in the implementation of current climate policies. The chapter concludes by considering possible measures to ensure that a rights-based approach influences the ongoing developments of the climate change normative framework.