Jeal­ously guard envir­on­ment to sus­tain tour­ism says EMA

(Zimbabwe) The Envir­on­mental Man­age­ment Agency (EMA) has called on Zim­b­ab­weans to jeal­ously guard the coun­try’s nat­ural resources, warn­ing that a thriv­ing tour­ism industry can­not sur­vive without a healthy envir­on­ment.

Speak­ing on the side­lines of the recent United Nations Tour­ism con­gress in Vic­toria Falls, EMA Matabele­land North Pro­vin­cial man­ager Mrs Chipo Mpo­fuZuze said tour­ism in Zim­b­abwe is wholly depend­ent on the use of nat­ural assets such as water, veget­a­tion and biod­iversity.

“We can­not have a boom­ing tour­ism industry when we do not have the nat­ural resources. So what I’m see­ing or what I have learnt is that we are going to be called upon to jeal­ously guard our envir­on­ment so that we are able to sus­tain our tour­ism,” said Mrs Mpofu-Zuze.

The UN Tour­ism Con­gress, which brought together global play­ers, also high­lighted the role of women in tour­ism.

Mrs Mpofu-Zuze noted that envir­on­mental degrad­a­tion hits women hard­est because their daily duties, fetch­ing water, col­lect­ing fire­wood and basic agri­cul­ture all depend on a healthy envir­on­ment.

“If the envir­on­ment is degraded, it means our roles as women are com­prom­ised,” she said.

Mrs Mpofu-Zuze said the con­fer­ence had rein­forced a crit­ical les­son as pro­tect­ing the envir­on­ment now car­ries a tan­gible dol­lar value through tour­ism, which will make EMA’s work easier when per­suad­ing com­munit­ies to become stew­ards of nature.

“People have always asked, ‘why should I pro­tect the envir­on­ment?’ Yes, it gives me basic needs, but this con­fer­ence has brought to light that tour­ism is going to bring the dol­lar value to the need of pro­tect­ing the envir­on­ment,” she said.

“So whenever we are going out there, we are going to encour­age people to pro­tect the envir­on­ment and also to ven­ture into tour­ism as women, as girls, as every­one who has to do with pro­tect­ing the envir­on­ment.”

Mrs Mpofu-Zuze said EMA would now broaden its approach, put­ting value on pro­tec­tion against pol­lu­tion, land degrad­a­tion and invas­ive alien spe­cies.

“If we des­troy or if we allow our envir­on­ment to degrade, allow invas­ive spe­cies to grow, it means we are cut on the ‘busy city’ com­ing to an area full of lantana camara,” she warned.

“So it means people will be forced to remove spe­cies to improve spe­cificity. People will be encour­aged to pro­tect their wet­lands so that they can also attract more biod­iversity, and this will also help them attract tour­ists to our areas.”

Mrs Mpofu-Zuze stressed that the mes­sage goes bey­ond Vic­toria Falls or major towns.

“The other thing that also encour­aged me is we are not only talk­ing tour­ism in Vic­toria Falls, a town or another city, but we are talk­ing about tour­ism. So it means our nat­ural resources in the rural areas are going to have a basis to be pro­tec­ted even more, to be guarded gen­er­ously even more,” she said.

Turn­ing to gender, Mrs Mpo­fuZuze said empower­ing women in envir­on­mental pro­tec­tion and tour­ism had a mul­ti­plier effect.

“If you capa­cit­ate or empower a woman, you have empowered the com­munity, you have empowered the nation, you have empowered the whole world,” she said.

The agency has pledged to broaden its stake­holder par­ti­cip­a­tion and put meas­ur­able eco­nomic value on con­ser­va­tion, turn­ing envir­on­ment­al­ism from a duty into an oppor­tun­ity.

Source: Jeal­ouslyguard envir­on­ment to sus­tain tour­ism EMA (10/05/2026)