[caption id="attachment_49107" align="alignleft" width="678"] Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, Minister of Environment, Water and Climate, Zimbabwe[/caption]
Zimbabwe’s President EmmersonMnangagwa has launched the country’s national climate policy which seeks to guide Zimbabweans on how to adapt, mitigate and build resilience against the impacts of climate change.
The launch also included the child friendly climate policy and the climate smart agriculture manual for agriculture education in Zimbabwe at the recent water resources infrastructure investment conference held in Harare on 4 to 5 June, 2018.
According to OppahMuchinguri-Kashiri, minister of environment, water and climate, government of Zimbabwe organized the water infrastructure investment conference and launch of the national climate policy to attract and mobilise the necessary investment needed for the development of the country’s water resources as well as to provide a broader framework on how the country will build resilience against climate change.
Kashiri said that the investment conference was a deliberate move by the government of Zimbabwe to respond to the dictates and obligations placed upon it in terms of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), goal number 6 on water and sanitation and goal number 13 on climate action in particular.
“Government of Zimbabwe puts a lot of emphasis on the need to manage our water resources if we are to attain Africa’s 2030 Agenda for sustainable development,” Kashiri said.
She added that in the last few decades, Africa has been experiencing recurrent droughts and floods which have negatively impacted on water security.
“We now know that with climate change upon us, it is very likely that the frequency, the intensity and extension of hydrological extremes such as floods and droughts will increase,” Kashiri said.
Kashiri added that the national climate change response strategy has been crafted from the national climate policy.
It is also reported that working with UN partners like UNICEF, the government of Zimbabwe has managed to develop a child friendly climate policy as a way of catching young people early.
“We hope that other arms of government will mainstream the provisions of the policy in their respective sectors,” Kashiri said.
The vision of the new policy is a climate resilient and low carbon Zimbabwe and its objectives are to guide climate change management in the country, enhance the national adaptation capacity, scale up mitigation actions, facilitate domestication of global policies and ensuring compliance to the global mechanisms.
Some of the key features of the policy include climate change adaptation, education, training and awareness, technology transfer and information sharing, weather, climate research and modelling, climate change mitigation and low carbon development.
Other features include climate finance mobilization and management, national and international collaboration, climate change governance, gender and climate change including policy implementation.
