adminJeffrey Gogo Climate Story
THE Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources Management has intensified the review and submission of written comments for the first draft of the National Climate Change Response Strategy, a process that will also give birth to the Climate Change Policy and a National Action Plan for adaptation and mitigation.
Review is a vital part of producing credible and sound papers before adoption and implementation, which is expected by end of year.
Lead consultant Professor Sarah Feresu of the Institute of Environmental Studies in Harare said the draft was now going through a multi-stage review process, opening it to scrutiny from different stakeholders of diverse backgrounds.
The review started two weeks ago in Harare where climate experts, NGOs and vulnerable groups among others submitted comments before moving to Manicaland last week. Consultations should expand to cover all Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces within the next two months, giving stakeholders, especially vulnerable communities, an opportunity to input into the process before it becomes final.
Gaining rural community feed is most critical as climate change impacts are felt hardest at this level. “We are using the first draft as the basis of our consultations. We are also developing an action plan for the strategy such that once it is completed, the plans may immediately be implemented.
“After consultations in September and October, we are hoping we would be able to sign the document off by the end of the year,” she said.
No one has ever questioned Zimbabwe’s need for an effective strategy and policy that deals with the dangerous effects of a rapidly warming planet.
Since 1900, the country has progressively experienced warmer temperatures, rising on the average 0,7 degrees Celsius, and overall decline in precipitation of 5 percent.
Floods and droughts have increased in frequency and intensity, particularly in the last 40 years, causing widespread social suffering.
Now, new studies show that Southern Africa will experience some of the worst impacts of climate change in the current century, if global mitigatory actions remain weak as they presently are.
Temperatures are seen climbing by about three degrees Celsius and rainfall declining by between 5 and 15 percent in the next 50 years, resulting in severe hunger, disease and water stress, according to the intergovernmental panel on climate change, the UN’s science-based climate authority.
A warming of this magnitude would be largely unsustainable, making climate change one of the biggest threats to the continuation of the human species on planet earth. All the panic seen in the world today is only a result of a warming of less than one degree Celsius. In the presence of such unflattering evidence, Zimbabwe two years ago started the process of formulating a strategy for responding to the problems posed by changing climatic conditions.
The process has been slow, moving at a pace less than desirable given the scale and frequency of damage arising from climate disasters.
Professor Feresu said in a previous interview that lack of funding was the major impediment to the speedy conclusion of the strategy.
Its absence has greatly limited the effectiveness of national climate responses, disrupted co-ordinated climate actions and streamlined climate change from key developmental processes. However, the first draft lines up a cross-sectoral analysis of the challenges and opportunities presented by climate change and variability, providing possible response strategies.
To reduce carbon emissions from land use and land use change, the draft proposes, among others, strategies which enforce policies that regulate the clearing of land for other land-use purposes and revising of the Forest-Based Land Reform Policy to incorporate adaptation and mitigation initiatives.
It advocates reforestation, development of information management systems to capture and monitor land-use changes as well a strengthening of the carbon emission trading market. Forests and grasslands have been decimated with reckless abandon in Zimbabwe losing an average 330 000 hectares every year and feeding into the cycle of climate change.
The draft notes that coping strategies should include the promotion of a culture that prevents veld fires “together with effective control measures and improve fire management through landscape change and prescribed burning”.
It says to develop livelihood adaptation strategies that support the provision of forest ecosystem goods and services that contribute to food security under extreme climatic conditions.
On agriculture, Zimbabwe’s mainstay, sustaining up to 70 percent of the population, the draft proposed a raft of measures to enhance adaptation and mitigation.
Among many options it said: “The country needs to initiate a livelihoods debate beyond aid or handouts and subsistence.
“There is a need to focus more on community empowerment processes that enable farmers to self-mobilise and self-organise for collective action towards increased production and enhanced market participation to their adaptation to climate change.”
The draft recognises the importance of applying indigenous knowledge products and technologies in adaptation. Industry and commerce should adopt strategies that improve resource use efficiency and use of renewable energies to limit emissions growth.
Low-carbon development remains the building block for a greener and profitable economy, eliminating inefficiencies that grow the country’s carbon footprint in all the key sectors such as energy, mining and tourism.
God is faithful.
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