The cash-strapped Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority has asked stakeholders to ratify four new 24-bed lodge developments for Mana Pools, three of these along the eco-sensitive river frontage and one inland. This comes less than a year after international outrage at Protea Hotels seeking to develop a 72-bed conference facility on the banks of the Zambezi RiConservationists and lovers of Mana Pools as a wilderness Park are up in arms at the proposals – for several reasons.
A recently-completed Park Management Plan, carefully negotiated and agreed between the Zimbabwe Parks Authority and relevant stakeholders, specifically advised against any new Park developments along the Zambezi river shoreline in Mana Pools because of the small size and very ecologically-sensitive nature of the Zambezi alluvial terraces known as “the Mana floodplain”. It did, however, allow for small developments at selected sites inland.
The Management Plan acknowledges that Mana Pools is important for the unique low-volume, high wilderness tourism experience it offers visitors, and advises that these values should be maintained into the future.
Critics of the proposed developments believe that increasing tourism bed-nights along the Zambezi river frontage by an effective 72 people per night would bring associated impacts which would seriously erode the very values that the industry sends its clients to enjoy.
New developments in the already impacted “floodplain” area would, they believe, “kill the goose that lays the golden egg”.
The Management Plan remains unsigned by the relevant Ministry, despite having been completed 18 months ago, a fact which has called into question Zimbabwe’s true commitment to proper and accountable planning procedures for National Parks and globally significant areas like UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
It is well known that the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority is short of money to manage its estate. The recent proposals have drawn criticism that the authority is seeking short-term quick-fix solutions to its financial crisis at the expense of the long-term future and sustainability of the country’s magnificent wild areas.
Zimbabweans are being made to look foolish in objecting to Zambian developments opposite Mana Pools on the grounds of unacceptable tourism impacts while effectively increasing tourism impacts on their own side of the Zambezi River.
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