adminAgriculture Column Tapuwa Justice Mashangwa
Over the past decade Climate Change has been a phenomenon making headlines and causing talks and debate among weather, environmental, agricultural experts and even politicians. Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time (i.e., decades to millions of years). In Zimbabwe our climate change has been characterised by the rise in temperature and aridity of the climate status quos agriculturally damaging as they lead to poor or now harvests
A World Bank Group paper on climate change and water resources planning, development and management in Zimbabwe, requested by the government, projects that by 2050 there will be a significant reduction in rainfall, river flows and groundwater recharge, with the highest impacts on the driest water catchments of southern Zimbabwe.
It encourages policymakers to develop an integrated climate change strategy for those sectors most affected by climate change: water and agriculture. It also recommends rehabilitating and expanding water supply and water resources infrastructure, focusing greater attention to the management and development of groundwater as well as improving water use efficiency, encouraging conservation and water recycling, and improving design standards to build resilience into infrastructure such as dams, levees and bridges, among other steps.
Promoting climate-smart rain-fed agriculture and rehabilitating and improving irrigation are urgent priorities for food security, particularly for the country’s most water-stressed areas in the south. About 80 percent of Zimbabweans depend on rain-fed agriculture, and the sector employs the majority of the population.
Although information and education to strengthen and promote environmental awareness have a high priority in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (Art.6), their value has so far been underestimated in Zimbabwe. The main focus of the debate on adaptation and prevention measures is still principally on the technical side. At the same time, it is precisely the educational sector, with its long tradition of and experience with the conveyance of social rules, norms and behavioural patterns, which offers important solution approaches to advance necessary social change.
The way to a post-fossil society requires new education concepts, which impart more skills in the creation of social change and innovative everyday technology. Potential Solutions Faced with the no longer preventable climatic effects, larger efforts to form a culture of security and resilience in Zimbabwe must be made. In order for this to succeed, educational approaches that support heightened risk awareness and risk perception, as well as the acquisition of suitable skills for readiness in case of catastrophes and disaster management must be established. Measures for acclimatisation should be more tightly linked to catastrophe precautions.
According to one writer and analyst Alfred Obed Rankomise, based in South Africa preparing the Zimbabwean population for the consequences of climate change necessitates two approaches: Adaptation and Prevention Measures & Information and Clarification.
For the Adaptation and Prevention Measures: the rural population should receive intensive instruction and training in the ‘new forms of agriculture’. These ‘new’ forms need to be accepted by the general public and the government, do without large and expensive machinery, require few resources (e.g. fertiliser), be practised successfully in other AU countries, and also be accepted by the church. The agricultural traditions in Zimbabwe must be taken into account.
With regard to Information and Clarification much of the population is not aware of the causes and effects of climate change. The need for adaptation and mitigation measures has also not been explained to the majority of the population. Clarification and information should be oriented towards state law in order to be successful, and must conform to the level of education of the rural population. Prevention and clarification will increasingly be of importance. The sensitisation of the population as well as the political decision-makers and business representatives, the collaboration with think tanks, the promotion of renewable energy and lastly the inclusion of Zimbabwe once again in the international climate and energy policy dialogue should be at the forefront.
The writer is Eng. Tapuwa Justice Mashangwa, a young entrepreneur based in Bulawayo, Founder and CEO of Emerald Agribusiness Consultancy. He can be contacted on +263 739096418 and
email: [email protected]
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