adminJeffrey Gogo Climate Story
IN retrospect, the year 2013 was largely disappointing for the broader environment and from a climate change viewpoint. The critical National Climate Change Response Strategy was never completed despite repeated assurances to the contrary.Chemical poisoning of wildlife took over as the preferred genocidal option by well-funded poachers against inadequate short-term responses by a cash-strapped Government.
Forest loss due to rampant tree cutting expanded, incidents of veld fires declined but remained unsustainably high, water pollution remained out of control and waste management was a nightmare. The UN climate change talks lacked ambition and sapped confidence among many in the developing world.
Only the creation of a new line ministry that for the first time incorporated the term “Climate” proved to be the major highlight in a year that struggled to find many positives.
Though very inadequate, the continued commitment by Government, private sector, NGOs, the Church and individuals to reforestation and afforestation is commendable as it keeps the spirit of environmental protection alive.
The Climate Change Response Strategy was expected to “provide a framework for a comprehensive and strategic approach on aspects of adaptation, mitigation, technology, financing as well as public education and awareness.”
It would also help Government to determine whether there was need for a policy or another legal framework on climate change. That, in 2013, did not happen, two years since the process of crafting the Strategy began. Lead consultant Professor Sarah Feresu of the Institute of Environmental Studies in Harare said in a previous interview that the Strategy had been delayed by lack of adequate funding.
Nearly half a million dollars was needed to complete the process. In May this year the final draft of the Strategy was produced. Countrywide consultative meetings were convened to gather community and expert input with the complete final document planned release slated for November.
It is now two days before the year folds. We understand Government is strapped for cash, but the delays in finalising the document is holding back key progress that could save lives at a time climate change impact is showing no mercy.
Zimbabwe is experiencing more hot and fewer cold days than before as a result of climate change and variability. The country’s annual mean surface temperature has warmed by about 0,4 degrees Celsius from 1900 to 2000.
The period from 1980 to date has been the warmest since records began in the early twentieth century. The timing and amount of rainfall received are becoming increasingly uncertain. The last 30 years have shown a trend towards reduced rainfall or heavy rainfall and drought occurring back to back in the same season.
The changes have impacted negatively on human livelihoods. The strategy may help people cope better. Climate change is now central to every sphere of socio-economic development.
Talking about and acknowledging its centrality, as is currently the case here, without corresponding concrete swift action is never enough.
The Hwange Ecological Disaster where more than 100 elephants and countless number of other wildlife such as the hyena, lion and buffalo died due to cyanide poisoning proved to be the most topical eco-event of the year.
Wildlife poachers were at work, exhibiting the height of sophistication in their deplorable career path, which is a nightmare for any government, particularly those without the financial clout to curb poaching.
Government responded swiftly and some of the poachers were arrested within days of the disaster and sentenced to many years in prison.
It later emerged that the ill-practice of cyanide poisoning had been going on undetected since 2010. Wildlife poachers have improved in technology and finances, which may be a quicksand for Government, given the existing financial challenges that make responses inadequate. The long-term effectiveness of Government’s actions post Hwange remain to be seen.
Water pollution, veld fires and deforestation continued to be real problem areas in 2013. Although preliminary indications were that incidents of veld fires declined in the current year, partly due to increased awareness by the Environmental Management Agency, millions of hectares of land are still being destroyed by veld fires each year.
These numbers are unsustainable and continue to destabilise food security, plantation forests development, animal habitat and pastures.
EMA needs to intensify its work on public awareness while deterrent penalties should be meted out against environmental offenders. At least 95 percent of all veld fires are human sponsored.
In September, President Mugabe appointed a new Cabinet in which he announced the formation of a new Government ministry, that of the Environment, Water and Climate.
While environmental and water affairs were adequately addressed in previous Governments, it was the inclusion of the term “Climate” for the first time into the broader frame of naming line ministries that caught the eye.
This was a significant policy shift towards how the country regards and addresses the challenge of climate change, a destructive man-made phenomenon causing worldwide suffering.
In many ways, this aids Zimbabwe’s climate change agenda. But more importantly, putting “Climate” on top ensures equity in resource allocation, which has been the weak link in climate responses.
It means climate issues will now be taken more seriously at the national level, receiving budgetary allocations and main-streamed into national developmental processes, much in the same way like water and other broad environmental matters.
However, those fruits have yet to fall to the ground for easy picking. We expect tangible and verifiable results in the New Year. From Warsaw, this year’s host city of the annual United Nations climate talks, Africa, and by extension Zimbabwe, returned with only an insignificant fraction of their pre-conference targets met, as has become the norm at successive Conference of the Parties meetings.
Developing countries only got US$112 million worth of pledges from developed countries from the promised US$100 billion per year until 2020 to fund adaptation and mitigation.
Despite contributing over two-thirds to the climate problem, industrialised states refused to take on deeper emission cuts. Japan actually lowered its targets to 3,8 percent from 6 percent previously, relative to 1990 levels. The European Union kept its cuts at an already inadequate 20 percent.
Africa was looking for emission reductions of over 40 percent by 2017 and 90 percent by 2030. The current reductions will be unable to keep global temperature rise at or below 2 degrees Celsius, the level considered by scientist as safe.
At Warsaw, the Ad hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action was largely expected to strengthen work on the content of the 2015 agreement and solidify outcomes on pre-2020 ambition, as key strategies for growing confidence that this process can deliver on both fronts.
That did not happen, to Africa’s chagrin. The ADP is responsible for designing a new legal agreement applicable to all parties to replace the Kyoto Protocol by 2015 and for advancing the pre-2020 emission and mitigation agenda. Another key COP19 agenda item, loss and damage, was also unable to restore Africa’s confidence that the UN process can meet their expectations.
Last year in Doha it was agreed that COP19 would establish “institutional arrangements, such as an international mechanism,” to address loss and damage in countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.
The eventual outcome on loss and damage, whose effects cannot be “prevented by even the most ambitious mitigation action” was a compromise agreement that under-performed the continent’s expectations.
There is now a lot of climate work that has begun at national and local levels in different countries worldwide outside the jurisdiction of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which may signify the waning confidence in the multilateral climate system from across many state and non-state actors.
God is faithful.
Online Reporter