PRESIDENT Rupiah Banda yesterday launched the National Policy on Environment (NPE) and called on Zambians to embrace and implement strategies of the policy, which include issues of climate change.
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Mr Banda also said that the Government had embarked on an awareness campaign on environmental issues targeting policy makers and vulnerable communities in rural areas. In a speech read for him by Tourism Minister Catherine Namugala during the launch in Lusaka yesterday, Mr Banda said the policy sought to promote sustainable environmental protection.
The president said the policy would ensure that economic activities were conducted in a manner that did not undermine the integrity of ecosystems. He said the overall vision of the policy was to provide a framework for the management of the environment and natural resources and protect future generations.
"I would like to appeal to the public to embrace and implement strategies of the NPE which include emerging issues such as that of climate change, " he said. Mr Banda called on cooperating partners to work with the Government and participate in the translation of policy strategies into viable programmes and projects.
The president said Zambia faced daunting environmental threats and challenges, which included climate change, deforestation, land degradation and loss of biological diversity, wildlife depletion and environmental pollution.
He said recent studies in Zambia indicated that there was increasing pressure on the country's natural resources, including forests with the current rate of deforestation being estimated at 250,000 to 300,000 hectares per annum.
Mr Banda said there were more than 30 legislative instruments enacted over a decade ago and some of them had been reviewed several times to address the conservation of biodiversity and protection of the environment.
The launch was attended by Cabinet ministers and cooperating partners
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