“A meeting involving four 4 SADC States of Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi and Swaziland was held at Mondior Summit Hotel, Gaborone, Botswana 25-28 April, 2006 to develop and harmonize their national environmental laws and policies in selected areas of biosafety, environmental impact assessment and wastes/chemicals management. The objectives of the meeting were, among others, to-

1. Ensure that the recommendations for policies and law for the respective environmental law topics in each project country are as far as possible in harmony;
2. Facilitate the development of legal and institutional mechanisms which are comparable as much as possible in all the four sub-regional countries;
3. Recommend harmonized normative prescriptions and institutional mechanisms for effective implementation and enforcement of respective environmental laws;
4. Create an opportunity for dealing with the respective environmental problems according to the problem-sheds, which are essentially sub-regional;
5. Develop proposals for facilitating the development and harmonization of environmental laws and institutions which can facilitate regional integration under the SADC Treaty and related instruments; and
6. Make recommendations on how each country should proceed towards implementation of the recommendations.

The meeting was held under the support of UNEP’s project on the Partnership for the Development of Environmental Law and Institutions in Africa (PADELIA). In the SADC sub-region, the project is being implemented in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi and Swaziland.”


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