Communities the key to adaptation in Zimbabwe

Jeffrey Gogo in AllAfrica.com via the Herald (Zimbabwe): Indigenous knowledge and active community participation will be critical in any strategy that seeks to deal effectively with the impacts of climate change in Zimbabwe. These are the findings from a report, "Climate Change Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation in Zimbabwe", released last month by the International Institute for Environment and Development. The paper strongly advocates a community-based approach (CBA) to climate change adaptation and in addressing vulnerability along with other climate impacts.

For effectiveness, it recommends that the Zimbabwe Government re-think participation in CBA projects as an instrument for empowering communities to influence policy-making at all levels as well as consider climate information including scientific data and local knowledge about trends and changes.

Drawing from practical vulnerability and adaptation experiences in several areas across Zimbabwe, the paper examines the impacts of climate change on vulnerable sectors including health, water, energy, agriculture, human settlement, gender, forestry and biodiversity and tourism. Adaptation projects have been piloted with measurable success in Chiredzi, Wedza, Shurugwi, Mberengwa and some sections of Matabeleland.

A key similar finding from the case studies was that climate change and variability was already impeding or reversing development, particularly in relation to poverty reduction, agricultural livelihoods and human health....

Zimbabwe ill-prepared for rainfall extremes, farmers say

Madalitso Mwando in the Zimbabwe Mail: Thumeliso Matshobana knows what the devastation of too much water looks like. A smallholder farmer in Zimbabwe’s Midlands, he watched helplessly last year as floods destroyed crops, livestock, homes and schools. The heavy rains, he says, came as “a total surprise.”

The floods left a trail of destruction in traditionally dry and impoverished rural areas of the Midlands and Matebeleland, and rebuilding has been a slow and painful process. “We want rain but not the kind that kills us and destroys our livelihoods. But no one ever seems to know exactly the kind of rains we will have,” Matshobana lamented.

That “makes it hard for us villagers to make necessary preparations,” he said, expressing what has become a common sentiment about unpredictable rain patterns that seem to vex even the country’s meteorological services department.

The Met office, as it is known in Zimbabwe, issued a flood advisory in late November, predicting heavy downpours. But because the Met office has been off the mark many times in the past with its weather predictions, which are now questioned by farmers and disaster preparedness organizations, farmers such as Matshobana find themselves with little idea what to expect or what to do to prepare for floods.

Japhet Hadebe, a climate change researcher working with the Zimbabwe Environment Research Organisation (ZERO) says climate change monitoring remains “a complicated issue in Zimbabwe.”...