35 Years of policy impact

The “35 Years of Policy Impact” document provides an exhaustive list of ZERO’s footprints in the Civic Space through collaborative efforts with like-minded individuals and organisations. Since its foundation in 1987, ZERO has contributed positively to the sustainable development of Zimbabwe and the SADC region through diverse programmes focused on energy and environment issues. In the past thirty years, ZERO has become a key and influential player in national and regional sustainable development policy formulation processes. ZERO has left an indelible mark on policy formulation and advocacy processes through the organisation’s high level interactions with various UN agencies, government ministries, local authorities, international development organisations, the private sector, academia and community based organisations.
In this document is also an acknowledgement of the challenges faced by ZERO which resulted in drastic scaling down of operations and internal revenue generation processes. ZERO survived an interruption of operational programmes amidst challenges resulting from internal mismanagement and like other CSO, has suffered from donor shrinkage, Covid-19, global recession, Russo-Ukraine conflict, inter alia. These difficult times enabled constructive insights which have led the organisation towards relaunching its commitment to environment and energy and indeed its cornerstone sustainable development sub-sector , with the urgency of addressing Climate Change induced concerns. The relaunching of ZERO will be centred on reconfiguring the organisation to the emerging issues that surround the current civic space.
Finally, the document aims to familiarize the reader to ZERO’s current strategy through a concise description of its relaunching with a continuous improvement approach to its themes, governance and funding. ZERO’s current strategy will therefore focus on pursuing the key national, regional and international strategies with a main focus on the following thematic areas:

• Biodiversity and Ecosystems Restoration
• Energy for Sustainable Development
• Climate Change
• Food Systems Transformation
• Sustainable Cities