Zimbabwe Environmental Lawyers Association

Formed in 2000 and legally constituted as a Trust in November 2001, ZELA was established at a moment when Zimbabwe was entering a prolonged period of political, social and economic upheaval, a context that shaped its founding conviction: that ordinary communities need dedicated legal advocates if they are to have any real voice in decisions about the land and resources beneath their feet. In November 2024, the organisation formally registered as a Private Voluntary Organisation, and in July 2025 rebranded from the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association to the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Organisation, reflecting its evolution into a broader, more established institution while continuing the same core mission under a new name.

Over 25 years, ZELA has grown into what is widely recognised as a critical node in every major national conversation about natural resource governance in Zimbabwe, particularly where mining and extractives are concerned. Its distinctive strength lies in a legal approach: rather than simply campaigning or providing aid, ZELA uses legal and policy research, advocacy, impact litigation, conflict resolution and civic education to influence the actual laws, institutions and enforcement mechanisms that determine whether Zimbabwe's natural wealth benefits its people or bypasses them entirely.

ZELA's mission centres on a defined bundle of rights it calls Environmental, Economic, Social and Cultural (EESC) rights, working from the premise that good governance of the environment starts with having the right laws and policies in place, and then genuinely monitoring whether they are followed. ZELA works simultaneously at the local community level, with local authorities, and with national and regional policymakers, giving it a rare vantage point that spans grassroots villages and government ministries alike.

Zimbabwe is extraordinarily rich in natural resources, home to more than 60 known minerals including gold, diamonds, platinum and chrome, and ranked among the world's largest holders of platinum and chromite reserves. Yet that mineral wealth has consistently failed to translate into broad-based benefit for the communities who live closest to it. Zimbabwe's mining sector suffers from a fundamental transparency problem: there is no single, reliable government source for basic data on mineral production, licensed sites, or export revenues, and the country's most recent comprehensive geological surveys date back to the 1980s. This information gap allows corruption, tax evasion and illicit financial flows to persist largely unchecked.

The human cost of this governance failure falls hardest on rural and communal communities. Mining activity has repeatedly caused loss of land and displacement without fair compensation, pollution of rivers that communities depend on for drinking water and irrigation, and the erosion of traditional livelihoods, all too often with little meaningful consultation beforehand. Land tenure in Zimbabwe's communal areas remains legally weak, since this land is state owned rather than titled to the people living on it, leaving rural families with limited legal standing when outside investors, whether mining companies or large-scale agricultural operations, move to acquire the land they depend on. Zimbabwe's waterways have suffered accordingly. Upstream abstraction and pollution linked to diamond mining in Marange, for instance, has directly deprived downstream communities of access to clean water, a stark illustration of how environmental degradation and human rights violations move together.

Community Share Ownership Schemes, intended to ensure local people benefit directly from mining on their land, have frequently been undermined by weak transparency, political interference, and a lack of clear reporting back to the communities they are meant to serve. Meanwhile, an outdated and in places colonial-era legal framework, particularly the Mines and Minerals Act, has left environmental protection, transparent licensing, and public disclosure of mining revenue badly under-regulated, even as successive reform bills have stalled in Parliament for years without being enacted.

Legal and Policy Research: ZELA produces in-depth research on the legal and institutional frameworks governing Zimbabwe's environment and natural resources, work that has established the organisation as a trusted, evidence-based voice that government, civil society and international partners alike turn to for reliable analysis.

Advocacy and Legal Reform: ZELA pushes directly for reform of outdated legislation, including the Mines and Minerals Act, and advocates for stronger transparency mechanisms such as a Zimbabwean version of the international Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, work carried out in part through its involvement with the global Publish What You Pay coalition.

Impact Litigation: Where legal reform alone is not enough, ZELA takes cases to court on behalf of affected communities, using litigation as a direct tool to enforce environmental rights and hold both companies and government entities accountable for violations.

Civic Education and Community Support: ZELA works directly with communities affected by mining and resource extraction, helping them understand and assert their legal rights, and building the kind of grassroots legal literacy that allows ordinary Zimbabweans to participate meaningfully in decisions that affect their land and livelihoods.

Conflict Resolution: In disputes between communities, companies and local authorities over land, water and resource access, ZELA works to mediate and resolve conflict through legal and dialogue-based means rather than allowing tensions to escalate unresolved.

Mining and Extractives Industry: ZELA's flagship programme area addresses the opacity and weak governance surrounding Zimbabwe's mining sector, pushing for transparent licensing, fair contract negotiation, and public disclosure of mining revenues, while also supporting the growing number of unlicensed artisanal miners who face onerous fees and limited legal knowledge.

Land and Natural Resources: This programme tackles weak communal land tenure, unfair land acquisition practices, water pollution and over-abstraction, deforestation linked to resettlement and tobacco curing, and the poaching and habitat loss threatening Zimbabwe's wildlife, including the long-running challenges facing community-based conservation models like CAMPFIRE.

Responsible Investments and Business: ZELA works to ensure that foreign and domestic investment in Zimbabwe's natural resources sector operates in line with international business and human rights standards, pushing companies and the state alike toward greater accountability for their environmental and social impact.

Local Service Delivery and Governance: This strand of ZELA's work strengthens citizen participation in local government decision-making, helping communities hold municipal and district authorities accountable for service delivery and resource management.

Climate Change and Energy: ZELA's climate programme addresses Zimbabwe's vulnerability to climate change and advocates for just, sustainable approaches to the country's energy transition.

Beyond research and litigation, ZELA has built practical digital tools that put reliable information directly into public hands. MiningPachena is an open data platform tracking mining activity and licensing across Zimbabwe, addressing the very transparency gap that has long allowed poor governance to go unchecked. ZELA also contributes to an Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) map and a Contracts Tracker, both designed to bring mining data out of government filing cabinets and into a form ordinary citizens, journalists and researchers can actually use.

ZELA's work has been made possible through sustained support from a range of international development partners. The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) has supported ZELA's natural resource management work directly, delivered in collaboration with local communities and authorities. ZELA's founding and early growth were supported by the Ford Foundation for Southern Africa, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Danish International Development Assistance (Danida), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW) supported ZELA in its earliest days as an organisation. ZELA is also a member of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), through which it has worked on independent mine auditing and community awareness, including its engagement with the audit process at Unki Mine. The organisation collaborates with the African Development Bank, the African Union, the United Nations Environment Programme, and the Africa Minerals Development Centre on continental mineral governance frameworks, and is a member of the global Publish What You Pay coalition and the Coalition for Human Rights in Development.