ABSTRACT
Recently, environmental constitutionalism has emerged as a powerful tool across the globe to address environmental challenges that fall beyond the grasp of other legal constructs. Environmental constitutionalism merges governmental structures and the modalities of individual rights in furtherance of an individual or collective norm and policy. In Zimbabwe, the advent of the new constitutional dispensation of 2013 has seen an increase in environmental litigation that demonstrates the increasing drive by the courts to embrace and enforce its constitutional environmental rights for environmental protection and sustainability. Before the constitutional amendment, environmental rights were only provided in the Environmental Management Act, without a constitutional guarantee. As such, there was limited litigation and no political will to assist litigants in asserting their environmental rights. The political situation had deteriorated considerably together with a decline in the rule of law and good governance, with serious adverse effects on the environment. Today, the growing jurisprudence on constitutional environmental rights is a testament to the embracing, by the courts, of environmental constitutionalism, which is a move towards promoting environmental sustainability. This chapter discusses the emergence of environmental constitutionalism in Zimbabwe. Specifically, this discussion takes place in the context of the prevailing socioeconomic-politico climate in the country. Increasingly, the courts are using this tool to adjudicate competing economic and environmental interests – thereby promoting environmental sustainability. Against this backdrop, the chapter highlights the core elements of environmental constitutionalism as a vehicle for environmental sustainability in the Zimbabwean context, paying particular attention to selected judicial decisions and their interpretation of constitutional environmental rights. The chapter establishes that despite the growing jurisprudence on environmental constitutionalism, the courts are yet to provide an interpretation and application of Zimbabwe’s constitutional ideal of ecologically sustainable development. The chapter concludes by considering the opportunities for Zimbabwean courts to promote this constitutional ideal.
