MINISTERS of Environment from across the globe met in China this week for the 13th Session of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) amid calls for increased commitment to the fight against drought.
Drought is a recurrent climatic phenomenon across the world which affects humanity in a number of ways such as loss of life, crop failures, food shortages leading to famine, lowering of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and increased food insecurity, malnutrition, health-related issues and mass migration both within and across borders.
This phenomenon has seen populations migrate from degraded areas that are prone to the scourge to urban areas in search of ‘greener’ pastures.
This has also impacted on urbanisation, in the process exerting pressure on service delivery and compromising provision of clean water, sanitation and waste collection services, among other things.
Studies in Zimbabwe reveal that urban population increased from two million in 1982 to four million in 2002.
It has since risen to 4,3 million in 2012 and this increase is associated with El Niño-induced droughts, among other bad weather-related factors.
It is estimated that drought costs countries around the world about six percent of GDP.
Speaking at the conference in China recently, the Minister of Environment, Water and Climate, Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, said there was need for commitment from countries to combat the challenge.
Said Minister Muchinguri-Kashiri:
“Previous Conference of Parties (COP) meetings have motivated the need for binding protocols relating to drought, sand and dust storms.
“We, however, note with concern that the development of the policy frameworks has progressed slowly.
“There can be no better time than this 13th session of the conference of parties for the convention in its 2018 – 2030 framework (for) a global objective that elevates the drought dimension of the convention.
“As Zimbabwe, we urge member-states to establish national drought management policies and frameworks as an effective and efficient approach to drought management.
“We note that whilst there are global frameworks and financing mechanisms, there is need for country parties to leverage own resources from national budget and private public partnerships. It is also important for each country to design its own robust land use masterplan framework based on its experiences at local, regional and global levels.”
Zimbabwe is one of many countries in the world that has been severely impacted by recurrent droughts and floods.
As an agro-based country, estimates have indicated that the number of people affected by drought has increased from about 700 000 in 1982 to about 2,1 million in 2010 and 2012.
In the period 1980-1990, cereal yields declined from an average of 1-1,4t/ha to 0,7t/ha between 2009 and 2013 due to drought.
Maize, a staple food crop for the country, declined in production from an average of 4,0t/ha to about 0,48t/ha, necessitating the Government to import grain worth US$1,5 billion to feed an estimated five million people (slightly half the country’s rural population).
The country also lost an estimated 20 000 cattle due to the same drought.
The 2016 winter wheat production under irrigation was reduced from 135 metric tonnes to 20 metric tonnes due to rationing of electricity since the levels of water for hydropower generation had been affected by drought.
Climate change, biodiversity loss, desertification land degradation and drought nexus needs not to be underestimated.
In Zimbabwe, some agro-ecological regions are shifting from wetter to a drier regime.
As a result, food producing agro-ecological regions of Zimbabwe regions two and three have shrunk by 49 and 14 percent while the drier regions four and five have increased by 5,6 and 22,5 percent respectively, resulting in water scarcity and shortage of firewood.
Women and children in these regions have been the most affected as they bear the brunt of degraded ecosystems since 80-90 percent of the rural people depend on wood fuel.
Due to scarcity of these resources, women and children, especially the girl-child, often travel long distances for the resources.
In Zimbabwe, poor farming methods such as absence of conservation works, stream bank cultivation, overgrazing, farming on steep slopes and uncontrolled fires lead to soil erosion, siltation of rivers and dams, subsequently reducing the carrying capacity of these water bodies.
In Zimbabwe, arable lands lose 15-50 tonnes per ha/year while range lands lose three-75 tonnes per hectare of soil due to erosion.
Globally, dust storms result in annual losses of US$1,7 billion in GDP per annum.
In response to this challenge, Zimbabwe’s drought mitigation strategies are informed by Zimbabwe’s Constitution crafted in 2013, complemented by the country’s economic blue print, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-ASSET) under the food and nutrition cluster.
Other supporting national policies to this cause include the National Policy on Drought Management (NPDM), Climate Change Response Strategy (CCSR), Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), National Renewable Energy Policy (NREP) and the Draft National Climate Policy (NDCP).
Supported by an irrigation policy, Zimbabwe constructed an estimated 10 000 small-to-large dams as a water-harvesting strategy.
The food security response strategy has realised an increase in small grain production by about 30 percent.
A deliberate move was taken to introduce an afforestation levy to promote the use of renewable energy for tobacco curing.
This has resulted in an agroforestry programme which is targeting over 25 million trees per year.
Furthermore, alternative sources of energy such as use of biogas and solar energy have been adopted mostly in rural areas at service centres such as schools, clinics, police stations and hospitals.
With regards to drought, Zimbabwe endorsed the Yogo Framework for Action in Japan (2005 – 2015) on disaster reduction to build the resilience of nations and communities.
The system involves the incorporation of indigenous knowledge systems for predictions of potential disasters by local communities.
The country also established a disaster risk management framework and drought early warning system. However, there is still need to review the polices in line with the current trends in early warning system, technology transfers, improvement of synergies among the three Rio Conventions (UNFCCC, UNCCD and CBD) and mainstreaming droughts as well as sand storms across all sectors.
With regards to early warning systems, as a practical tool for implementing timely and appropriate responses to droughts, Zimbabwe collaborates with universities and research institutions in the use of appropriate technologies.
Noting the affordability and availability of satellite-based technologies in drought forecasting, Zimbabwe benefits from the SADC sub-regional use of latest meteorological radar systems.
Locally, efforts are being made to integrate local knowledge systems with science-based technologies into the information system for predicting the occurrence of natural disasters.