Press and Environmental Management Agency (EMA)’s Active Role in Reporting and Monitoring Environmental Degradation Caused by Small Scale Artisanal Gold Panning in Zimbabwe A Case of Shurugwi Peri Urban

Abstract

Small scale artisanal gold mining, popularly known in Zimbabwe as chikorokoza( illegal gold panning), has become one of the major causes of environmental degradation currently taking place at alarming proportions countrywide. The country’s  mineral rich Great Dyke, cutting across the country is mostly affected.   In a bid to raise public awareness, and protect the environment from further damages, the Environmental Management Agency ( EMA), and the Zimbabwean press, have embarked on reporting  and educating Zimbabweans about the negative effects of small scale artisanal gold mining, on the country’s natural environment. Implicated for being the major cause for the prevalence of illegal gold mining is the country’s high rate of unemployment.  The economic decline has led to increase in retrenchments hence retrenched workers have no other means of irking a living, besides invading the country’s major rivers, mountain slopes and the countryside, to pan for gold. The application of mining methods which are not environmentally friendly, cause massive environmental degradation.  The panning sites are deforested by the artisanal miners who fell trees for firewood, shelter and mine props. On the other hand, the country’s  river beds, river banks, valleys, the countryside and mountain slopes, are littered with deep trenches, wide gorges and disused mine shafts, left behind by marauding illegal gold panners,  who desert the panning sites, when new gold deposits have been discovered  elsewhere. After realizing that small scale artisanal gold mining had caused unprecedented massive  environmental degradation in many parts of Zimbabwe, the government introduced the Environmental Management Agency ( EMA) in March 2007. EMA was tasked to curb environmental degradation caused by illegal gold mining, by engaging artisanal miners throughout Zimbabwe, educating them to apply environmental friendly mining methods.  . After EMA’s declaration of war on makorokoza ( illegal gold panners) through Operation Chikorokoza Chapera ( Operation Illegal Gold Panning is Over), the Zimbabwe Republic Police  fight running battles with illegal gold panners countrywide. These scuffles bear no positive results, because artisanal gold mining still escalates, causing massive environmental degradation. Heavily panned and environmentally devastated Shurugwi,  is  case study representing  other  places affected by illegal gold mining activities in Zimbabwe  Zimbabwe is signatory to a number of international conventions on environmental protection and management, which call for consented effort  to uphold good methods of managing the natural environment. Therefore this paper intends to explore how EMA and the press’ active participation raise public awareness, to influence government to act.

Keywords : Environmental Management Agency (E M A ), Press,  chikorokoza (illegal gold panning ) , artisanal, degradation  Shurugwi.