Mid-Zambezi Valley declared biosphere reserve

This designation is a first for Zimbabwe, and indeed the immediate region – the only other Biosphere Reserves in the Southern African region being in South Africa and Malawi.

Biosphere Reserves are areas designated under UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme to serve as places to test different approaches to integrated management of terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine resources and biodiversity. Biosphere Reserves are thus sites for experimenting with and learning about sustainable development.

Zimbabwe’s new Middle Zambezi Biosphere Reserve stretches over approximately 40,000 sq. km in the Zambezi valley. It includes riverine and terrestrial ecosystems unique to the subcontinent, one of its largest man-made reservoirs, Lake Kariba, and two core National Park areas, the Matusadona National Park on the Lake Kariba’s southern shores, and Mana Pools National Park, already a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Controlled safari sport hunting in parts of the buffer zone around these core areas, provides employment for hundreds of people. The area also comprises human settlements, notably the town of Kariba, which depends largely on fishing in Lake Kariba for protein and income. The fishery of the Freshwater Sardine or Kapenta, with an annual output of about 40,000 tonnes estimated at a value of US$40 million, rivals major lake fisheries in the region.

Zimbabwe’s designation was announced along with 12 other new Biosphere Reserve sites and five extensions in 15 different countries. The World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR) now numbers 564 sites in 109 countries.

Sadly, the new Biosphere Reserve (like the Mana/Sapi/Chewore World Heritage Site declared by UNESCO in 1984), does not include Zambia’s side of the Zambezi Valley.

The Zambezi Society urges the relevant authorities in Zambia to help safeguard the future of valuable Zambezi biodiversity by making similar applications to the United Nations body on their side of the Zambezi River.