Strengthening Citizenship Participation Towards Sustainable Development in Zambia Through Economic Inclusion in Environmental Management

With the prevailing arguments in support of active citizenship, the focus in the SADC region and across the world has been on political participation as the strongest form of citizenship. However, it is increasingly agreed that economic inclusion and participation are just as important as the status and practice of citizenship as political participation. While the global agenda to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals is anchored on the theme “Leaving no one behind”, many citizens within the SADC region are passive participants due to the lack of recognition of the right to economic participation and inclusion. In the Zambian context where most of the population lives in abject poverty and is a passive recipient of the government’s developmental programmes and economic reforms, an analysis of economic inclusion and participation of those living in poverty and most vulnerable to social exclusion as a form of active citizenship and good governance is cardinal. The chapter evaluates the role of law in perpetuating the exclusion of the poor from the economic and social agenda of the country. It does this by analysing the laws regulating solid waste management and public health to evaluate their role in promoting the participation of the poor in economic and environmental sustainability. It finds that although Zambia’s constitution and policy documents make important pronouncements on sustainable development and citizen participation, many laws exclude the poor from economic participation by criminalising their economic activities and failing to recognise and remunerate their contributions to sustainable development. Using environmental law, it proposes pathways that Zambia’s regulatory framework could create for strengthening economic citizenship as an offshoot of the right to participate in economic inclusion and the attainment of sustainable development.