The Sunday News
Vincent Gono, Features Editor
EXTREME weather events such as cyclones, flooding, heat waves and drought have been on the increase and have had a debilitating effect at community and national level with loss of human and animal life, infrastructure destruction, diseases and displacements.
The trend has been like that for a number of years now and a number of communities have suffered the effects of climate change and yet remain ignorantly perplexed after the harsh strike of nature.
The Government has, however, started consulting marginalised and vulnerable groups to ensure they are fully engaged and involved in the resilience building interventions as it gears up efforts to deal with the effects of global changes in climate.
Speaking at the validation workshop of the vulnerability assessment report and adaptation appraisal framework in Bulawayo recently, Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Permanent Secretary, Mr Munesu Munodawafa said the impact of climate change could no longer be overemphasized with aspects of extreme weather events such as flooding, cyclones and droughts on the increase in recent years.
He said rainfall seasons were increasingly becoming uncertain threatening livelihoods and economic performance adding that Government was responding to this urgent need for climate action by facilitating an enabling environment for climate change programming in the country.
“The impact of climate change may not be over-emphasised with aspects of extreme weather event such as flooding and droughts on the increase in recent years. The situation is worsened by the relationship between poor rainfall and GDP performance. This calls for urgent climate action!
“The Government has responded to this urgent need for climate action by facilitating an enabling environment for climate change programming in the country. As the country develops its medium-term development strategy, it is taking concerted efforts to integrate climate change issues in the plans to ensure our development efforts are climate proofed against unprecedented climate change vagaries,” said Mr Munodawafa.
He said there was a general consensus on the vulnerability of agriculture, human settlement, infrastructure, water, health, forest and biodiversity sectors to the impacts of climate change.
Such effects, he said, needed people to collectively agree on the country’s adaptation goal while also ensuring that it was aligned with the country’s vision of developing its economy in a low carbon and climate resilient trajectory with the long term goal of achieving an upper-middle income economy by 2030.
“It is therefore, imperative to consult widely ensuring that marginalised and vulnerable groups are engaged during the process of coming up with the resilience building interventions as provided for by this forum,” he said.
The permanent secretary underscored the need for other Government ministries to integrate climate change in development planning saying such things as building architecture should be taken into cognisance when planning.
“Climate change calls for ministries to plan with it in mind. You will find that it affects a lot of ministries and not the agriculture and water only. Detailed planning from the type of houses to resources relating to diseases and infrastructure should be factored in.
We obviously need infrastructure that is fit to withstand the climate vagaries such as cyclones, floods and strong winds and not the pole and dagga structures like part of the ones that were destroyed in Chimanimani by Cyclone Idai.
“There are communities that are still backward and still have faith in traditional structures of pole and dagga as homesteads. Such structures are very vulnerable to agents of climate change. You will find that a lot of villagers whose homesteads were affected by previous cyclones were not very modern in their architecture. We want people to know the effects of climate change so that they plan with it in mind even when building their houses,” said Mr Munodawafa.
In response to climate change and its effects on housing structures, National Housing and Social Amenities Minister Cde Daniel Garwe said they were engaging architects and engineers through the Zimbabwe Institute of Engineers to come up with national housing designs that were able to withstand harsh climatic conditions such as hailstorms, cyclones and strong winds.
“In the meantime, we are in the process of engaging architects and engineers through the Zimbabwe Institute of Engineers.
“The desire is to come up with modern designs which will withstand the effects of climate change. There is a need for innovations in this regard. Such designs with heaped roof and gable roof have been with us for generations. We need designs which do not easily give in to the effects of climate change.
“The time is now for our young architects and engineers to come up with beautiful and attractive designs that speak to the modernity and can withstand the effects of climate change and move away from the pole and dagga houses,” said Minister Garwe.
Minister Garwe said the Government was going to assist those communities that cannot afford decent houses subject to availability of resources.
Ms Emily Matingo, a climate change scientist in the Ministry of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry said they were engaging at national and sub national level where they were carrying out climate change mainstreaming outreach programmes targeting all the districts in the country.
She said one of the pillars of integrating climate change in development plans was to first have an understanding of the country’s vulnerabilities.
To this end, she added, a study of the country’s vulnerability extent to the impacts of climate change looking at the socio-economic sectors and subnational boundaries has been produced. The study identities agriculture and water sectors as highly vulnerable to climate change impacts requiring urgent action to climate proof them.
Ms Matingo said in that regard there was need to adopt smart initiatives aimed at cushioning the sectors against climate related vagaries.
“So far, we have covered all the districts of Mashonaland Central and Masvingo provinces where our stakeholders included district development coordinating committees, community representatives, traditional leaders and vulnerable groups to raise awareness on the need to integrate climate change.
“Through these fora the stakeholders got the opportunity to learn that everyone has a role to play in the climate change agenda so that people are not caught unaware of the effects. We are teaching the communities to adopt climate smart initiatives such as growing traditional small grain crops, engage in pfumvudza farming method, desist from deforestation. By doing this they aid in building resilience,” she said.
