Zimbabwe works on Climate Change Act

FOLLOWING the operationalisation of the loss and damage fund at the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP28) last year, Zimbabwe has started crafting a framework that will help the country access any global funding for climate change activities.

A fund was established to assist developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change and damage associated with the impact of global warming.

In an interview, the director for climate change management in the Ministry of Environment, Climate and Wildlife Dr Washington Zhakata said the country is also working on crafting a Climate Change Act.

Already the principles of the Act have been approved by the Cabinet and are now in the phase of consultation.

“For us to enforce climate change fully, we need to have a Climate Change Act. We have trained experts to track the speed at which companies are implementing various mitigation aspects of reporting on activities they are doing to transform into the most sustainable forms of energy,” he said.

Dr Zhakata said they conducted an energy and water use efficiency initially on 10 selected companies and further expanded it to the hotel and hospitality sector.

“We are now expanding to cover the wider spectrum of stakeholders in collaboration with Comesa to ensure that once we have robust energy water use efficiency, we will come up with an improvement plan to contribute to reductions and nationally determined contributions which are our obligations as a country to the Paris Agreement,” he said.

Dr Zhakata said climate mitigation is a top priority for the country and entails those that are emitting in the critical sectors like energy, forestry, agriculture, industry and waste sectors to be knowledgeable about mitigation.

All citizens are expected to be actively involved in climate action on the adaptation side.

Dr Zhakata said after COP28 that was held in the United Arab Emirates, one of the positives was the operationalisation of the loss and damage fund.

Developed countries that are parties to the Paris Agreement and financial institutions should lead in providing funding for the operationalisation of the loss and damage fund.

“Now as a department, we have started working on a framework on loss and damage which we will prepare. Once we are done with it, the Government will be ready to access any of the resources that will be made available by the global funds,” said Dr Zhakata.

“Once we have a framework, which will define our state of vulnerability and exposure to climate change areas that are at stake concerning these impacts to climate change.”

Dr Zhakata said there is a need to know what is going on at the global level to leverage best practices.

“We are called upon to reduce the usage of fossil fuels in the country. While we develop our fossil fuels we need to ensure that we also increase energy mix in the country to be inclined towards renewable energy where possible and not moving away from fossil fuels in a state that will not be sustainable to the country,” he said.

Dr Zhakata said expanding the energy mix will help the just transition as reliance on hydro-power has proved not to be the solution due to successive droughts while solar cannot drive industry on its own.

In 2015 countries agreed to report on their national climate change action plans and made sure each country contributes towards 1,5 degrees emission reduction.

Recently, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Consultative Group of Experts (CGE) held a workshop in Victoria Falls to capacitate member states to focus on preparing their biennial transparency reports (BTRs) about measurement, reporting, and verification under the Convention and the enhanced transparency framework (ETF) under Article 13 of the Paris Agreement.

Parties have until December 31 to submit the reports.