Not abundant anymore. Women queue at a borehole in Bulawayo as the country faces a groundwater crisis in the absence of rain. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Feb 23 2016 (IPS)

Sijabuliso Nleya has been kept busy in the past few weeks digging up sand. He is not a sand poacher like scores of people who local district councils across the country say are digging along dry river beds for sand used in the construction of houses. “The situation is terrible,” said Nleya, who owns a plot in Douglasdale, a small farming community on the outskirts of Bulawayo.

Together with other men, he has been filling up dry wells and boreholes, as groundwater increasingly becomes an unforeseen casualty of climate change, thanks to the absence of rainfall for long periods across the country. “The dry wells have become dangerous when in the past they were a source of our livelihood. It’s better to fill them with sand than dream that they will provide us with water one day,” Nleya told IPS.

Underground water sources sustained farming activities here earlier with maize, tomatoes, cabbages and a range of vegetables, including paprika, being sold in the city. “Only a few boreholes now are functioning and we have watched our source of income evaporate,” he explained. Zimbabwe has always considered irrigation fed by groundwater as the bulwark against low rainfall, but the climate ministry says thousands of boreholes have dried up across the country, putting a further strain on the poorly funded agriculture sector that has long relied on the rains.

In Bulawayo, hundreds of community gardens that provide economic safety nets for low-income households use borehole water. Now, with thousands going dry across the country, authorities have raised concerns about the far-reaching implications not only for incomes but health, especially as HIV/AIDS patients rely on produce from these gardens for their nutritional requirements. According to the environment, water and climate minister Oppha Kashiri, more than 12,000 boreholes across the country have gone dry, in a country that is experiencing its worst drought in recent years. “Our water sources are drying up in all the seven catchment areas,” he told journalists on February 4.

President Robert Mugabe has declared drought as a national disaster as more than a quarter of the population face food shortages. Aid agencies report that up to 2.5 million people require food assistance.” The agriculture ministry says up to 90 per cent of the rain-fed maize crop planted last year has been a write off.

According to the Southern African Development Community’s groundwater and drought management programme, up to 70 per cent of the population in the region relies on groundwater, and in a 2015 assessment noted that climate change was exacerbating the groundwater crisis. The Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA), a government department under the water ministry, says up to 70 per cent of the population resides in the rural areas where the primary sources of water are boreholes and wells. Scarcity is now forcing humans and livestock to share water sources.

More urban residents are using groundwater. Although the drilling of new boreholes is banned, the haphazard sinking of boreholes continues and is exhausting the water table. “It is vital to highlight that groundwater is a very finite resource which can easily run out if there is no balance between replenishing of groundwater stock and extraction,” warned this agency. “Due to increasing water shortage and the growing reliance of urban communities on borehole water, minimum groundwater utilisation standards have been disregarded and this has seen a prompt decline in the water table with boreholes in some suburbs dying,” the water authority added.

Measures to introduce taxes on groundwater users has failed to stem the widespread domestic use of borehole water as the capital city struggles to provide potable water from household faucets. The absence of rainfall only worsens groundwater management. Amidst the groundwater crisis, the Vice-President Emmerson Mnagagwa on February 10 launched a US$1.5 billion appeal for drought relief, with about US$350 million expected towards the rehabilitation of irrigation infrastructure largely fed by boreholes. A countrywide assessment by the agriculture ministry says more than 16,000 cattle have died because of drought. In the past, farmers relied on groundwater to ensure the availability of pastures throughout the year. Not any more

However, Peter Makwanya, a climate change researcher at the Zimbabwe Open University believes the solution could lie in building more reservoirs to harvest rainwater as many part of the country experience flash floods where millions of litres go to waste: “there are quite a number of sustainable ways to save water through rainwater harvesting. Now that groundwater levels are getting depleted, it’s not favourable to encourage people to continue exploiting underground water,” he told IPS. According to him, “farmers can also re-use grey water (water that has been used before) and this can go a long way in achieving water security. This water can be used on a small-scale basis to achieve household sustainability.”

Nleya and millions of subsistence farmers, residents and villagers, who rely on groundwater, are the human face of the ravages of climate change. “We never thought water could actually disappear in the ground as we have always had functioning boreholes and wells, we hope we get rains soon,” he said.

(End)

The post Groundwater Crisis Worsens Food Insecurity appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A small boy plays with his toys. Poor nutrition in Zimbabwe is exposing vulnerable children nutrition to mental health challenges according to humanitarian agencies. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jan 12 2016 (IPS)

Mildren Ndlovu* knows the mental toll of Zimbabwe’s long-drawn economic hardships in a country where a long rehashed statistic by labour unions puts unemployment at 90 per cent.

Ndlovu, a 27-year-old single mother is raising two children, both under 5-years old, and survives on menial jobs such as doing laundry and dishes in neighbouring homes, says she has watched their health deteriorate and not just physically.

“I know they are not growing up the way other children are,” Ndlovu said, as she changed the underwear of her four-year who had just soiled himself.

“At his age, he should be able to visit the toilet by himself, yet I still have to change him,” she said from her one roomed shack in one of Bulawayo’s poor townships that litter the city’s north.

Ndlovu’s concerns about the slow development of her children point to the broader effects of Zimbabwe’s economic decline on vulnerable groups, with the UNICEF early this month releasing the Zimbabwe Poverty Atlas 2015 (http://unicef.org/zimbabwe/resources_17478.html) showing high poverty levels across the country that are affecting children’s mental health.

At the launch of the report, UNICEF, the World Bank and government officials said the poverty atlas is an attempt recognise that “Children are rarely recognised in poverty alleviation efforts and their needs are not properly addressed.”

According to the report, no child from the poorest health quintile reaches higher education, with eight of the country’s ten provinces registering poverty levels between 65 and 75 per cent.

“Child poverty has reduced (their) mental health and is reponsible for poverty when they are adults,” said Dr. Jane Muita, UNICEF’s deputy resident representative in Zimbabwe.

“It (child poverty) results in lower skills and productivity, lower levels of health and educational achievement,” Dr. Muita said.

According Zimbabwe’s health and child welfare, the country has witnessed an increase in mental health diagnoses, and has put in place a Mental Health Strategy 2014-18 to deal with the crisis.

The ministry blames the tough economic conditions that have thrown millions into the streets of unemployment.

There are no available figures of how mental health has affected children, but concerns by parents such as Ndlovu are giving a human face to a crisis that has been highlighted by the UNICEF report on child poverty and their mental health.

In some parts of Zimbabwe in the south-west districts such as Nkayi were found to have up to 95.6 per cent of poverty, while Lupane poverty levels stood at 93 per cent according to the UNICEF’s Zimbabwe Poverty Atlas.

There are concerns that this will slow the country’s march towards realising its Sustainable Development Goals to reduce child poverty by 2030.

Last year, the Zimbabwe Vulnerable Assessment Committee found that up to 36 per cent of children in Zimbabwe have stunted growth which experts say has not only affected them physically, but has also slowed their mental growth because of poor diets.

“The problem with children’s health and their mental development is that the attitude of both parents and some health workers is that these children will soon grow out of these challenges,” said Obias Nsamala, a Bulawayo pediatrician.

“But what I have seen with many children under 5 years is that these mental deficits can be detected when they come for treatment but only become an issue by the time they have began school. I think that is why for a long time this country had something like special classes for children not intellectually gifted,” Nsamala told IPS.

“I believe its been a wrong approach because some of these children may be slow learners or intellectually challenged not because of some genetic deficit but because all the signs were ignored earlier on based on their backgrounds and access to adequate meals,” he said.

As the country seeks to improve the lives of vulnerable groups such as children with government officials saying the country needs to grow the economy in order to reduce poverty, there is no consensus on how exactly this will be achieved to attract investment, with the country continuing to rely on international development partners to create safety nets for the poor.

From 2014 to June last year, UNICEF says it spent 363 million dollars on social services, this at time the country’s critical social services ministries are facing budget cuts which officials have admitted made it impossible to provide adequate assistance such as health care.

Under the 2016 national budget, the health and child welfare ministry received 330 million dollars which will largely be funded by donor countries, leaving a huge deficit which Minister David Parirenyatwa said is not enough to meet such such sectors as the poorly funded psychiatric clinics.

Perhaps to highlight these funding challenges, officials at the country’s largest psychiatric institution which caters for adults, Ingutsheni Hospital in Bulawayo early this year told Minister Parirenyatwa that the mental health hospital requires 23 doctors but only had six.

The social welfare ministry, also previously offering financial support for vulnerable group’s such Ndlovu’s children, has complained of poor funding from government.

Aid agencies say millions will require food assistance in 2016, further pushing Ndlovu and many others on the edge of what UNICEF’s Poverty Atlas says are their mental needs.

*name changed to protect her identity

(End)

The post Zimbabwe: Poverty Stunting Minds and Growth appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Successive poor harvests have diminished Ndodana Makhalima’s household food stocks and the family’s nutrition status.

A subsistence farmer in Lupane, about 110 kilometres north of Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo, 56 year-old Makhalima has learnt to live with hunger on his door step.

Farmers will have limited access to climate smart agricultural knowledge and skills as cash strapped Zimbabwe cuts technical assistance from agricultural extension officers. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

“In the past I could eat umxhanxa (a mix of maize and melon) and inkobe (a mix of maize, cow peas, and groundnuts) throughout the year, but not anymore,” Makhalima said.

“My silo is empty and my family has nothing to eat. I think today’s children will never know the kind of body-building foods we ate when I was young,” he said, highlighting the extent of compromised household
nutrition across rural Zimbabwe.

The country’s rural-based subsistence farmers are facing a myriad of challenges with the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) warning of another drought during the 2015/16 season, which could further compromise already dire nutritional needs in a country where the UN World Food Programme (WFP) says millions will require food assistance.

But it is the financing of the sector, once a major contributor to the country’s GDP, that has further dwindled hopes for relief for Makhalima and millions of other rural farmers.

Zimbabwe requires millions of dollars to fund irrigation schemes dotted across the country and while the climate ministry and the meteorological services department announced a cloud seeding exercise in October to boost rainfall, this is yet to take off.

The meteorological office also announced it would be buying an aeroplane for cloud seeding, but the department has previously complained of financial constraints that have affected its operations. It is not clear where financing for the aircraft will come from. Experts however say cloud seeding can be done when there are particular clouds that favour the exercise.

Announcing the national budget on 26 Nov, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said agriculture will require 1, 7 billion dollars, while setting aside 28 million dollars to fund farming inputs for 300,000 vulnerable rural households.

Under the scheme, small-holder farmers will receive maize and small grain seed and fertiliser.

But farmer unions say more will be required beyond these hand-outs as the country’s rain-fed agriculture faces
prolonged dry spells.
”The importance of this sector lies in its contribution to export earnings of around 30 per cent, 60-70 per cent of employment and about 19 per cent of GDP, that way providing a major source of livelihood for over 70 per cent [of the population],” Chinamasa told parliament in his budget presentation.

According to Chinamasa, agriculture production, which saw a plunge of 51 per cent from the 2013/14 season, will recover by 1.8 per cent despite the climate ministry’s warning that 2015/16 will be a
drought year.
The day after the budget presentation, Minister Chinamasa told a breakfast meeting that Zimbabwe would sign a 60-million dollar agreement with the UN International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) to finance irrigation which the agriculture ministry is touting as a solution to boost agriculture production.

Yet subsistence farmers, who have relied on technical assistance from agriculture extension officers, could face tougher times ahead after the finance minister announced that these officers will face the chop as part of government efforts to reduce its wage bill.
These cuts come at a time when farmers seek new farming knowledge and skills to deal with climate vulnerability blamed for poor harvests.

The Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVAC), established by government and which sets benchmarks for rural nutrition with support from the UN World Food Programme, says 1.5 million people or 16 per cent of the country’s rural population, are food insecure. ZimVAC notes that this is a163 per cent increase from last year.

Development agencies have tied nutrition to people’s ability to lead productive lives with access to nutrition especially emphasised for vulnerable groups such as people living with HIV and Aids. WFP is already assisting malnourished HIV and Aids and tuberculosis patients around the country through the Health and Nutrition programme, with the potential to assist millions of patients living in rural areas according to the country’s health ministry.

There are, however, concerns that failed agriculture and poor harvests that have depleted household food stocks will make it difficult for HIV and Aids patients to access much needed nutritional support — a
vital requirement in anti-retroviral therapy.

During the October World Food Day commemorations led by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and WFP, FAO Sub-Regional Coordinator for Southern Africa and Representative in Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Botswana, David Phiri, noted that the UN in Zimbabwe “recognises that in order to achieve inclusive agricultural development and food and nutrition security, targeted social protection programmes should be in place.”

As part of efforts to improve agriculture production and nutrition, FAO and WFP are assisting small-holders in adopting climate smart agriculture, complementing government efforts that emphasise rehabilitation of irrigation schemes across the country.

These interventions could offer much-need relief for farmers like Makhalima, for whom agriculture is vital for nutrition and income.

(End)

The post Weak Agriculture Finance Feeds Malnutrition in Zimbabwe appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Zimbabwe’s planned Batoka Gorge power project on the Zambezi River is expected to generate 2,400 megawatts (MW) of electricity, upward from an initial 1,600 MW, but the worsening power cuts that are being blamed on low water levels have renewed concerns about the effects of climate change on mega dams.

Batoka Gorge Hydro Electric Power plant. Credit: Construction Review Online

In the past two months, the country’s energy utility has increased power rationing, with rolling power blackouts being experienced for up to 20 hours across the country per day.

Zimbabwe has for years relied on hydroelectricity, and is one of a number of African countries that are banking on hydropower to spur economic growth, with multibillion dollar dams expected to generate thousands of megawatts.

While there is no timetable of when construction of the 3 billion dollar Batoka Gorge Dam will commence and whose eventual economic dividend will only be realised after a decade of construction, it will add much needed energy in Zimbabwe where power generation stands at around 1,600 MW against a national demand of 2,200 MW.

Officials say on completion of the Batoka hydropower plant, the country will be a power exporter.

However, the long running power crisis has stalled economic expansion and has in fact forced the closure of major companies, the latest being Sable Chemicals, which was this month switched off the national grid in what energy minister Samuel Udenge said was part of short-term strategy to avail energy to other sectors.

But the switch-off forced the country’s sole fertiliser plant to shut down operation and left more than 500 employees jobless, company officials say.

The company owes the power utility 150 million dollars.

According to Minister Undenge, 80 per cent of Zimbabwe does not have access to electricity, and the Batoka Gorge hydropower plant, a joint project with Zambia that will draw water from the Zambezi, a transboundary water body shared by eight countries, is expected to boost power production and bring electricity to remote rural areas.

Early this month, Minister Undenge told parliament that the Zambezi River catchment area was affected by rainfall the patterns of other countries.

“Water is still flowing into the Zambezi River from the north, but we are drawing more water than what is flowing in, hence the continued decline in the water level,” Undende said, explaining the reduced power production.

It is these concerns about low water levels that have experts worried, with questions being raised about whether mega dams are viable investments in the long term, citing climate uncertainty and concerns about reduced run-off that would affect dam water levels and ultimately reduce power generation.

In fact, the worsening power crisis in both Zimbabwe and Zambia is being blamed on low water levels at the Zambezi river.

Researchers at International Rivers, an organisation that looks at the state of the world’s rivers and how local communities can benefit from them, warn that the big dam projects could be rendered useless in the long term because of climate change and reduced run-off.

They favour smaller dams for localised power generation, but smaller dams also cost money which Zimbabwe does not have.

Last year, the climate ministry announced that the country will be constructing more dams to cushion the county against climate uncertainty, at the same time advising heavy industrial electricity consumers to construct their own power generating plants.

In the absence of these private power generators, the Batoka Gorge Dam is being touted as the ultimate solution to the longstanding energy deficit despite warnings that the project could present its own problems as it does not address climate-related future realities.

Peter Bosshard, Interim Executive Director of International Rivers, says the Zambezi river basin, the location of the Batoka Gorge Dam, has one of the most variable climates in the world which will increase the dam’s hydrological risks.

“The (UN’s) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that the river (Zambezi) may suffer the worst potential climate impact among eleven major African river basins,” Bosshard told IPS.

“Multiple studies have estimated that streamflow in the Zambezi will decrease by 26 to 40 per cent by 2050,” he said, adding that “in spite of these serious predictions, the proposed Batoka Gorge Dam has not been evaluated for the risks of climate change.”

But Hodson Makurira, a senior hydrologist at the University of Zimbabwe does not agree.

“That would be an oversimplification of a complicated and highly uncertain projection of future events,” he told IPS.

“The same climate change predictions are forecasting an increase in extreme events, droughts and floods. You would (then) want to capture as much flood water as possible through increased storage. That would cushion you against periods of low flows,” Makurira said.

“Nobody knows the exact magnitude of reduction in flows due to climate change so it may still make economic sense to build dams,” he told IPS.

Bosshard said the dam project’s feasibility study dates from 1993, “and climate change considerations have not been integrated.”

“The project is based on historical streamflow data, which do reflect future realities. Investors, financiers and tax payers should be aware that the studies for this multi-billion dollar project seriously over-estimate its economic viability,” Bosshard said.

But for Minister Undenge, who is increasingly under pressure to solve Zimbabwe’s energy crisis, neither financing nor climate change will stop this ambitious mega dam.

(End)

The post Zimbabwe’s Mega Dam Project Could Flounder in the Face of Climate Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Rain forest in Zimbabwe, where the politics of access and control over forests and their carbon is challenging conventional understanding, and comes down to the question of land and whether local rural communities can benefit if they are not the owners of land. Credit: By Ninara/CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Aug 14 2015 (IPS)

The efficacy of attempts to sustainably manage forests and conserve and enhance forest carbon stocks in Zimbabwe is increasingly coming under scrutiny as new research warns that the politics of access and control over forests and their carbon is challenging conventional understanding.

It all comes down to the question of land and of whether local rural communities can benefit if they are not the owners of land.

Even where they do “own” land, say researchers, these communities often find themselves competing with other players driven by different economic considerations, nullifying the very ideals being pushed under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

“Carbon forestry projects – as previous interventions in forest use, ownership and management – have not been the panacea some had expected … multiple conflicts have emerged between landowners, forest users and project developers” – Ian Scones
Despite the country’s agrarian reform programme, under which land was redistributed to millions of landless local communities, the state remains the biggest landowner, raising questions about community empowerment and the ownership of forests.

With researchers pointing to a spike in the demand for land based not only on rural population growth but also on people reportedly moving to rural areas, there is no doubt that any increase in the rural population brings with it increased demand for natural resources.

“The demand on natural resources for land is growing year on year at a rate which is not sustainable,” says Steve Wentzel, director of Carbon Green Africa, and this will mean reforestation in the millions, with these trees being planted on plots that do not belong to local communities at a time when some farmers are decimating forest cover by using firewood to cure their tobacco.

The promise held out by REDD+ was that through reforestation and by reducing emissions, communities would then have access to or earn certified emission reduction credits to be sold to or traded with the worst polluters to meet their own emission reduction targets, yet it is clear that like any economic transaction, those who owns the means of production profit most.

Land is still owned either by the state or big business, with little cascading to the “bottom billion” as some economists have called the world’s poor, and landowners and the rich industrialised countries benefit at the expense of rural communities.

According to Ian Scoones, co-editor with Melissa Leach of a recently published book titled Carbon Conflicts and Forest Landscapes in Africa, “carbon forestry projects – as previous interventions in forest use, ownership and management – have not been the panacea some had expected.”

Scoones says that “multiple conflicts have emerged between landowners, forest users and project developers. Achieving a neat market-based solution to climate mitigation through forest carbon projects is not straightforward.”

On Zimbabwe’s REDD+ project, which has covered 1.4 million hectares under Carbon Green Africa, Scoones says that “as notional ‘traditional’ and ‘administrative’ owners of the land, they [rural communities] should have the authority. But they are pitched against powerful forces with other ideas about resource and economic priorities.”

Civil society organisations (CSOs) here argue that this explains why rural communities get the shorter end of the stick.

Meanwhile, a recent brief from Zimbabwe’s climate ministry noted that “rich countries have barely kept the promise” of meeting their pledges, casting doubts on whether rural communities will in fact trade any anticipated carbon credits for cash.

The rural poor could well be saying “show us the money” by 2020, the year targeted in Cancun, Mexico, for emission reduction pledges.

Climate and environment ministry officials agree that land ownership under REDD+ has remained a sticking point in its dialogue with CSOs on how local communities may derive premium dividend from forest carbon projects.

“CSOs represent the interests of local communities and lack of safeguards has made this issue an area of divergence between governments and CSOs,” says Veronica Gundu, acting deputy director in the Climate Change Management Department of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate.

“They (CSOs) are pushing for clarity on land ownership and the benefits to the local communities because they view the current regime of implementation to be beneficial only to the project implementers and leaving out the locals,” Gundu told IPS.

However, Wentzel of Carbon Green Africa which is implementing Zimbabwe’s sole REDD+ project in the Zambezi valley, told IPS: “As it stands the people of these districts are the rightful beneficiaries of revenue generated from their natural resources even if they are not titled land owners.”

Edited by Phil Harris 

The post Zimbabwe’s Forest Carbon Programme Not All It Seems appeared first on Inter Press Service.

These Zimbabwean farmers with their harvested sorghum are at the mercy of climate change, while the government struggles with meagre financing and tall ambitions to take adequate action. Credit: UNDP-ALM

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe , Aug 2 2015 (IPS)

With the U.N. Climate Change conference later this year in Paris fast approaching, Zimbabwe’s climate change commitments face the slow progress on an issue that continues to stalk other developing countries – climate finance.

As it prepares for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP21), Zimbabwe – like many others in the global South – is grappling with radical climate shifts that have seen devastating exchanges of floods and droughts every year, and still awaits green bailout funds from developed nations, with officials here telling IPS, “this support should come in the forms of technology.”

The country’s halting progress on the climate front is being blamed by local climate researchers on the country’s failure to invest in state-of-the-art climate monitoring technology. More still needs to be done as the country heads to Paris, says Sherpard Zvigadza, Programmes Manager, Climate Change and Energy, for the Harare-based ZERO Regional Environment Organisation (ZERO)."The country [Zimbabwe] needs to partner with those in the private sector who are making an effort to develop projects or reduce their footprint, and implement a reward-based strategy so that both individuals and corporates are encouraged to support the government’s policies" – Steve Wentzel, director of Carbon Green Africa

“Zimbabwe should strengthen systematic observation, ensuring improved real-time observations and availability of meteorological data for research,” Zvigadza told IPS.

These concerns arise from what is seen here as repeated failure by the poorly-funded Meteorological Services Department to adequately monitor climate patterns and put in place effective early warning systems for disaster preparedness.

However, these constraints have not stopped Zimbabwe, which for the past two decades has seen a wilting of international financial support for crafting ambitious climate change interventions.

Recurrent climate-induced disasters have shown that this not the time to treat anything as “business as usual”, says Elisha Moyo, principal climate change researcher in the Climate Change Management Department of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate.

And these efforts have brought together civic society organisations (CSOs), farmers and ordinary Zimbabweans in what is expected to shape the country’s negotiations in Paris.

CSOs point to the fact that Zimbabwe has been identified by GLOBE International, which brings together legislators from all over the world, as having on the most comprehensive environmental laws in southern Africa, and say that this should be a stimulus for helping the country make greater strides in climate governance.

According to a climate ministry brief issued last month, Zimbabwe’s climate policy seeks, among others, weather and climate modelling, vulnerability and adaptation assessments, mitigation and low carbon development.

However, as tall as these ambitions sound, the climate ministry has acknowledged that in the absence of adequate financing the country could still be far from meeting its United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) commitments.

“There is a need to expand current projects as well as develop new projects throughout the country for the country to position itself to be able to raise funding for these developments,” said Steve Wentzel, director of Carbon Green Africa, a Zimbabwe-based company established to facilitate the generation of carbon credits through validating Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) projects.

“The country needs to partner with those in the private sector who are making an effort to develop projects or reduce their footprint, and implement a reward-based strategy so that both individuals and corporates are encouraged to support the government’s policies,” Wentzel told IPS.

“If the country is serious about moving away from business as usual, awareness raising is key for all stakeholders, including the general population as well as industry,” Zvigadza told IPS. “A vigorous campaign is needed across the country. More importantly, Zimbabwe’s national climate change response strategy has to be operationalised so that the challenges are addressed according to different local circumstances.”

Yet, by the climate ministry’s own admission, progress has remained slow due to the continuing problem of lack of funds, which Moyo believes should be tapped from the richer nations.

“As Africa, and supported by other developing countries from other regions, we believe the rich countries have not yet shouldered a fair share of the burden and should lead by example, in terms of cutting emissions and also providing financial support to poorer nations as stated in the Climate Change Convention,” Moyo told IPS.

And Zimbabwe certainly does need the money. The climate ministry is already wallowing in reduced state funding after the Finance Ministry slashed its national budget from 93 million dollars in 2014 to 52 million this year.

Meanwhile, domestic economic considerations are one of the obstacles to implementation of the country’s troubled climate change policy. Despite seeking to promote clean energy, power generation is still largely fossil fuel-based, where instead of cutting emissions, relatively cheaper coal feeds power generation.

The climate ministry policy brief says the country needs to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions from energy production transmission and use”, but economic hardships have made this a tall order where millions also rely on highly-polluting firewood for fuel.

“We are compiling the “intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) and have been conducting consultations and data collection around the country especially with reference to the energy sector, which has a high potential of emission reductions through adoption of
renewable energy wherever possible,” Moyo told IPS.

INDCS are the post-2020 climate actions that countries say they will take under a new international agreement to be reached at COP21 in Paris, and to be submitted to the United Nations by September.

For its climate change ambitions to succeed, Zimbabwe must go back to the grassroots, says Wentzel, but unfortunately “there is a lack of knowledge of climate changes issues,” he told IPS.

As Washington Zhakata, Zimbabwe’s lead climate change negotiator put it: “The road to the Paris summit remains unclear with many stumbling blocks on the road.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

The post Zimbabwe’s Climate Change Ambitions May be Too Tall appeared first on Inter Press Service.

There has been an increase in pregnancies among Zimbabwean adolescents aged 15-19 years, from 21 percent between 2005 and 2006 to 24 percent between 2010 and 2011. Credit: Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Oct 1 2014 (IPS)

Pregnant at 15, Samantha Yakubu* is in a fix. The 16-year-old boy she claims was responsible for her pregnancy has refused to accept her version of events, insisting that he was “not the only one who slept with her”.

Now Yakubu has dropped out of school and, like many sexually active youth in Zimbabwe, faces an uncertain future.

The issue of contraceptive use remains controversial and divisive in this country of 13.72 million people.

Parents and educators are agreed on one thing: that levels of sexual activity among high-school students are on the rise. What they do not agree on, however, is how to deal with the corresponding inrcrease in teenage pregnancies.

“Lack of adequate, medically accurate information on puberty leaves young people dependent on uninformed peer sources and unguided Internet searches for information." -- Stewart Muchapera, communications analyst with the UNFPA in Zimbabwe.
While Zimbabwe has made huge gains in some areas of reproductive health, including stemming new HIV infections, according to the Health Ministry, various United Nations agencies have raised concerns about the growing number of adolescent pregnancies, which experts say point to a low use of prophylactics and a dearth of other family planning methods.

According to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), contraceptive use in Zimbabwe stands at 59 percent, one of the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. Still, this is lower than the 68 percent mark that the government pledged to achieve by 2020 at the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning.

A proposal last year by a senior government official to introduce contraceptives into schools, allowing condoms to be distributed free of charge, was met with disbelief and anger among parents, who insisted this was tantamount to promoting promiscuity among learners.

There is still no agreement between parents and educators about the stage at which students can be introduced to sex education.

“Lack of adequate, medically accurate information on puberty leaves young people dependent on uninformed peer sources and unguided Internet searches for information,” says Stewart Muchapera, a communications analyst with the UNFPA in Zimbabwe.

“The fertility rate among teenage girls aged 15-19 in 2010/11 was 115 per 1,000 girls, a significant increase from 99 per 1,000 girls in 2005/6,” Muchapera tells IPS, adding that geographic location also determines the likelihood of early pregnancy, with girls living in rural areas twice as likely to be affected than their urban counterparts.

In fact, the rate of adolescent pregnancies is just 70 per 1,000 girls in urban areas, compared to 144 per 1,000 girls in rural areas, he adds.

The Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey (ZDHS) reports that nine out of 10 sexually active girls aged 15 to 19 are in some form of a marriage, and that for two out of three girls who first had sex before age the of 15, sex was forced against their will.

The risk of maternal death is twice as high for girls aged 15 to 19 as for women in their twenties, experts say, and five times higher for girls aged 10 to 14 years.

Currently, Zimbabwe has a maternal mortality ratio of 790 deaths per 100,000 live births and an under-five mortality rate of 93 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Janet Siziba, a peer educator with the Matabeleland Aids Council, says there is a stigma attached to early pregnancy, with many forced to drop out of school or endure financial hardships after the birth of a child, particularly after the disappearance of an adolescent father.

“You can escape both pregnancy and HIV by increased condom use and, perhaps more importantly, by using other female contraceptives [such as the female condom and oral contraceptives],” Siziba tells IPS.

But with young people getting mixed messages on contraceptives, the trend is unlikely to change anytime soon. In fact, the country’s registrar-general Tobaiwa Mudede has actually warned women against using contraceptives, on the grounds that they cause cancer and are a ploy by developed countries to stem population growth in Africa.

Family planning advocates including the Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council (ZNFPC) called his comments retrogressive especially at a time when the country’s health system is struggling to stem maternal mortality and also provide adequate antenatal care.

Through its National Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategy (ASRH), the Ministry of Health now allows adolescents to access contraceptives at public institutions such as clinics and hospitals, but peer educators are concerned that youth are not too eager to collect contraceptives in full view of the public.

The result is an increase in pregnancies among adolescents in the 15-19 age group from 21 percent between 2005 and 2006 to 24 percent between 2010 and 2011.

Experts say that conservative attitudes towards contraceptive use could slow down global efforts under the multi-sector Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) initiative, which seeks to increase access to contraception for women and girls between 15 and 49 years of age in developing countries.

According to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation–supported FP2020 project, 260 million people from developing countries had access to contraceptives in 2012, and the initiative aims to add 120 million more by the year 2020.

*Names have been changed

This story originally appeared in a special edition TerraViva, ‘ICPD@20: Tracking Progress, Exploring Potential for Post-2015’, published with the support of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. The contents are the independent work of reporters and authors.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

The post Zimbabwe’s Family Planning Dilemma appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Moses Ginindza (l) and Mphumuzi Magwagwa, Swazi firewood vendors. While wood poaching is illegal under environment laws in many African countries, researchers note that nothing is being done in providing alternative sources of energy to curb deforestation.Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jun 2 2014 (IPS)

Despite a raft of legislation dealing with the environment, African countries are still falling short when it comes to enforcing the legal instruments that respond to challenges posed by climate change, researchers say. 

“Most African countries have robust legislation on the environment. But good on paper as they are, they fall far short of implementation,” Samuel Ogalla, programme manager at the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), a coalition of civil society organisations from the continent, told IPS.

Many countries have acts of parliament and statutory laws in place that, for example, punish those contributing to global warming. Deforestation is a huge challenge towards implementing Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) programmes and while wood poaching is illegal under environment laws, researchers note that nothing is being done to provide alternative sources of energy to curb deforestation.

While there has been a push to familiarise African parliamentarians on climate change issues to assist them with drafting climate legislation for their local realities, existing country laws have also failed to follow up on climate change concerns.

“African countries need to go beyond mere crafting of environmental laws to full implementation of such laws with clear monitoring, reporting and verifiable mechanisms if the continent must address climate change and other environmental challenges facing the region,” Ogalla said.

One such example is Zimbabwe. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), this country has one of the most comprehensive environmental legislations in southern Africa.

Yet Zimbabwe faces huge drawbacks in addressing and meeting its REDD+ commitments because of decades-long deforestation.

Heinrich Böll Stiftung Southern Africa, the German Green Political Foundation, says Africa lacks comprehensive legal frameworks and this “may present barriers to the implementation of adaptation responses, and possibly increase the vulnerabilities of certain groups such as women and the poor.”

The organisation has also noted that while there are campaigns to raise climate change awareness, there has been “fewer investments in legislative aspects.”

Researchers say this has relegated the climate change drive to the periphery of public policy at a time when the call is for African countries to domesticate international conventions of which they are signatories such as the UNFCC.

Laws must go beyond punishing wood poachers and polluters to addressing the core issues, says Charles Ndondo, director of Carbon Green Africa, a company established to facilitate the generation of carbon credits through validating REDD projects in Zimbabwe.

“Legislation to address climate change issues [in Zimbabwe] has always been there if you consider the Forestry Act … and various legislations which deal with the environment,” Ndondo told IPS.

“The only challenge with these acts is that they are more punitive rather than addressing the root causes of climate change. The Forestry Act prohibits people from cutting firewood for fuel purposes but does not provide alternatives and hence the challenge,” he said.

The South African-based Trade Law Centre, in recommendations to Africa’s regional blocs, including the Southern African Development Community, East African Community, and the Common Market for East and Southern African, noted that the constraints that African countries face in implementing successful strategies to address climate change include “weak institutional and legal frameworks.”

“Regional and national legal frameworks can enable countries in the region to build adaptive capacity and reduce their vulnerability to the effects of climate change,” the centre observed.

These are the “bottlenecks” GLOBE International legislators across the continent are trying to address, says Innocent Onah, director of GLOBE Nigeria.

GLOBE International brings together parliamentarians across the world and helps them draft laws “in pursuit of sustainable development” and convenes the World Summit of Legislators to advance relevant climate legislation.

“While it may be correct that without climate change legislation a lot would not be achieved domestically, I am of the opinion that even where laws exists, if there’s lack of capacity to implement or enforce the laws, we are back to square one,” Onah told IPS.

“Legislation is one of the tools that governments can use to tackle climate change problems, in Africa, [but] the major issue is not the absence of laws but lack of resources and the political will to implement established laws and policies,” he said.

While Onah observed that “parliamentarians from different countries have different levels of environmental competencies,” PACJA’s Ogalla says that more laws are not necessarily the answer.

“More and new legislation are being crafted on environment across the continent but the irony is that with all these laws, the continent still remains the vulnerable hot spot to climate change and other environmental problems,” Ogalla said.

Domesticating international agreements allows “countries [to] forge ahead with distinctive national actions that run alongside international collective action,” says the International Institute for Environment and Development.

The post Legislation Alone Will Not Address Africa’s Climate Challenges appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Residents in Bulawayo's high density urban suburbs have taken to farming vacant plots of land after last year’s unexpected rains, thereby combatting food insecurity. However, in Zimbabwe, urban farming in illegal. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Apr 10 2014 (IPS)

It is harvest season in Zimbabwe and Janet Zondo is pressed to find space on the piece of land she is farming to erect a makeshift granary. Zando says she could very well build a miniature silo, judging by the size of the maize crop that she is preparing to harvest.

But Zondo is not a communal farmer somewhere deep in the rural areas. She is one of the many residents in Bulawayo’s high-density urban suburbs who have taken to farming vacant plots of land here after last year’s unexpected rains filled rivers, destroyed dams and claimed lives.

In the residential suburbs of Tshabalala, Sizinda and Nkulumane, here in Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, vacant plots of land are flourishing with maize. "It's a self-regulating mechanism, and for the sake of sustainability, trying to feed yourself must not be illegal." -- Japhet Mlilo, a development researcher

Like many here, Zondo had always dabbled in farming. But her maize crop always failed because of successive poor rains. Last year’s heavy, unexpected rains provided the right conditions for planting.

“I have never harvested this much maize crop,” Zondo, who is from Nkulumane, told IPS.

“I expect to produce more than 100 kilograms of mealie meal [course flour made from maize] from my maize field,” Zondo estimated.

Other residents farming on vacant plots also expect to harvest a bountiful crop this season. But there are no guarantees that Zondo, or any of the other residents who have taken to farming, will be tilling the same piece of land next season.

This is because the land is owned by the local municipality. And Zimbabwe’s bylaws prohibit farming on vacant municipal land.

“We are aware people are farming on undesignated areas but we also must make humanitarian considerations. People need food and we know not everyone can afford mealie meal,” a Bulawayo city councillor, who himself planted maize on a vacant municipal plot, told IPS.

“Most of the land is reserved for residential homes, which means these farming activities are not permanent,” he said.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), while acknowledging that urban agriculture is illegal in many countries, estimates that more than 800 million people around the world practice urban agriculture and it has helped cushion them against rising food costs and insecurity.

FAO says the number of hungry people has risen to over one billion, with the “urban poor particularly being vulnerable.”

Under its Urban and Peri-urban Horticulture Growing Greener Cities project, FAO is working with governments in developing countries on “integrating horticulture into urban master development plans,” and this is what residents like Zondo could benefit from.

“We are always in constant fear of our crop being chopped down by the municipality. I am in a rush to harvest before anything like that happens,” Zondo said.

Regina Pritchett, global organiser for land and housing, and community resilience at the U.S.-based Huairou Commission, a global coalition of women in development and policy advocacy, says that while women are at the forefront of sustainable development, they are still bogged down by bureaucracy in accessing land.

“You need local solutions for women and access to land,” Pritchett told IPS.

However, experts note that this lack of formal ownership of small pieces of land could threaten livelihoods and food security in the long term in developing countries.

As increasing numbers of urban residents grow their own food, it could help cushion them against food shortages in Zimbabwe’s cities, says Japhet Mlilo, a development researcher at the University of Zimbabwe.

This southern African nation is already facing a food crisis. Last year it imported 150,000 tonnes of maize from Zambia in what experts say is a sign that local farmers are once again not going to meet demand.

According to the agriculture ministry, the country requires 2.2 million tonnes to meet its annual maize requirements.

“At the end of the day it’s simple arithmetic. Make urban farming totally illegal and people fail to plant their maize, which means [they will] starve. Or you can let them plant their own crop and you help reduce the number of people who need food assistance,” Mlilo told IPS.

“Residents already know which piece of land is theirs even without having titles to it. I am yet to hear residents fighting over land they allocated to themselves without municipality approval. It’s a self-regulating mechanism. For the sake of sustainability, trying to feed yourself must not be illegal,” he explained.

If globally women were given title deeds to land, it will help contribute to the sustainability of farming projects as owning resources provides some “incentive” for  women to continue farming, said Karol Boudreaux, a land expert with the Cloudburst Group, a U.S.-based think tank.

“Securing land rights can help deal with issues that range from food security and women’s economic empowerment,” Boudreaux told IPS.

For Zondo, however, the assurance that the her crop will not be destroyed by municipality’s police is enough.

“I have worked hard for this, imagine losing it,” Zondo said.

The post Zimbabwe’s Urban Farmers Combat Food Insecurity — But it’s Illegal appeared first on Inter Press Service.

HIV patients who do not adhere to their ART will often develop drug resistance. Credit Jennifer McKellar/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO , Dec 18 2013 (IPS)

Each month, scores of people living with HIV gather at Mpilo’s Opportunistic Infections Clinic in Bulawayo for free antiretroviral medication that has improved their lives.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage is set to expand in line with new guidelines, but experts fear weakening adherence to drug regimes will limit the benefits.

Sindiso Buzwani* is one of those who should be at the clinic, but this month he is absent. Asked why he has stopped taking medication despite his failing health, the frail-looking man in his forties reacts with anger. “Everyone is sick. Why are you asking me why I’m not on medication? Are you taking yours?”

Attitudes like Buzwani’s are part of a growing problem that may be contributing to HIV-related deaths at a time when the country is fighting to roll out the ART.

Some cite the side effects of the ARVs while others say the drugs are unpleasant to take, but Buzwani was unwilling to disclose his reasons for abandoning the treatment.

In November 2013, the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare reported that following the adoption of new World Health Organisation guidelines, the number of people requiring antiretroviral therapy had jumped from more than 800,000 to around 1.2 million. The WHO’s updated recommendation is to enroll patients on ART earlier: if their CD4 count falls to 500, rather than the previous threshold of below 350.

The new guidelines have also changed the approach to the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Where mothers were previously discouraged from breastfeeding in order to reduce the risk of HIV transmission to their newly-born babies, seropositive mothers are now encouraged to breastfeed exclusively for six months while adhering strictly to their ART throughout pregnancy, delivery, breastfeeding and thereafter.

But there are growing concerns that expanded enrolment in antiretroviral therapy will not do as much as it should to reduce HIV-related deaths if patients like Buzwani fail to adhere to their drug regimens.

By resisting or discontinuing treatment, Buzwani could end up developing drug resistance. AIDS patients who develop resistance to their antiretroviral drugs have to go on to the next line of treatment, requiring more expensive and less accessible drugs.

Edmore Mutimodyo, advocacy and communications officer for the Zimbabwe National Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS (ZNNP), says sensitisation campaigns are being conducted by various interest groups and government departments to help people better understand the benefits of anti retroviral therapy and how to take the drugs on a healthy diet.

“Before taking ARVs, you go through a process of understanding how they work, possible side effects. Also you have to pass an adherence procedure. If you [are] likely to default, they will ask you to bring a treatment buddy to help you through the process,” he said.

Health officials at Mpilo Hospital say patients cannot be forced to take their medication whatever their reasons.

Other people living with HIV fail to access ARVs because of the long waiting list coupled with lack of funding for these drugs, according to the Ministry of Health and the ZNNP+.

Zimbabwe’s ARV programme is supported by the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which NAC says has disbursed 21.8 million dollars for the 2014 rollout. More patients are expected to access ARVs once local manufacturing of drugs, in partnership with Iran, begins as announced by the health ministry in October this year.

Despite this, adherence will continue to be a problem as long as attitudes such as Buzwani’s or the health workers’ method of distributing ARVs at public health facilities – which is said to contribute to real or perceived stigma – are not addressed.

“Some nurses we spoke to did say that there were people who stopped taking ARVs because of side effects or because of stigma: they didn’t want to be seen taking a pill everyday,” said Kerry Scott, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, who has worked in Zimbabwe before.

Patients like Buzwani who are abandoning their medication may be an exception, but could still point to difficulties that lie ahead in the country’s fight to reduce AIDS-related deaths.

*Not his real name.

The post Drug-Shunning Patients Could Derail Zimbabwe’s AIDS Plan appeared first on Inter Press Service.

A CD4 testing machine. Research by the University of Zimbabwe shows that female patients with high CD4 counts have developed a nevirapine toxicity. Credit: Jennifer Mckellar/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Dec 9 2013 (IPS)

New research suggests that some AIDS patients are developing drug intolerance and severe side effects and will now have to switch to new, more expensive antiretroviral regimens.

Researchers in Zimbabwe, Uganda, Nigeria and Malawi say some patients on the first-line antiretroviral drugs nevirapine and efavirenz (EFZ) are showing signs of being intolerant to the two drugs.

Daniel Sibanda, a University of Zimbabwe researcher, said while not many studies had been carried out on drug intolerance and side effects of antiretroviral therapy (ART), new research had found that there are toxicity concerns for some patients.

“Our research has found that female patients with high CD4 Counts had developed nevirapine toxicity,” Sibanda told the 17th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa currently taking place in Cape Town, South Africa. “This means they must switch to other drug regimes but these could be expensive alternatives.” 

These new concerns come just as Zimbabwe adopts new World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, which revised the recommended threshold for enrolling patients on ART from a CD4 count of 350 to 500. The new guidelines have expanded the number of Zimbabweans needing ART from around 800,000 to more than 1.2 million, according to the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare.

The challenge of paying for this expanded treatment coverage is complicated by the possibility that some patients will need different medication.

“These (nevirapine) are first line drugs and when patients are then switched to other drugs because of toxicity this could present problems for a country such as Zimbabwe because these drugs are expensive and are not available as free ARVs,” Sibanda told IPS.

In Malawi, one of the countries with the highest number of people living with HIV, according to the United Nations Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, some patients are experiencing side effects from EFZ.

Dr. Colin Speight, of Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, said the observed side effects include dizziness, insomnia and vivid dreams, psychosis, confusion, rash and abnormal gait.

“EFZ was promoted as the new wonder drug in Malawi, and while most patients had no side effects, mild side effects were common,” Speight told IPS.

While the number of patients experiencing problems remains small, according to Speight, there are not many feasible alternatives for treating them.

“What we [are] now aiming for in Malawi is to try to find a regimen that will work best for as many people as possible. You are never going to get one drug which everyone will tolerate,” he said.

Early this year, there was an outcry among AIDS patients and activists in Malawi who were pressing the government to source new drugs after several complained of experiencing different side effects.

One option to deal with the side effects and reduce the toxicity of ART could be reducing the dosage patients take, Dr. Jackson Mukonzo, a Ugandan researcher from Kampala’s Makerere University, told the conference.

But Prof. Tandakha Dieye of Dakar University’s Department of Immunology warned that health workers and patients needed to weigh concerns over toxicity against the drug’s ability to prolong life.

“Toxicity does not always occur as soon as a patient takes the drug; it may take long to develop or even appear 20 years later,” Dieye told IPS. “The benefits are higher than the risks … we must find a balance between toxicity and the benefit of the drugs.”

On a continent where many people living with HIV are already unable to access life-prolonging antiretroviral medication, the challenge of drug intolerance threatens effective measures to control the AIDS epidemic.

Further research to determine both the causes and extent of drug intolerance is called for. Researchers, health care practitioners and government officials can then devise plans to overcome the problem.

The post ARV Intolerance – A Growing Problem for AIDS Treatment in Africa appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Youths from Movement for Democratic Change led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) in Zimbabwe are vocal at the party's rallies but can they get younger voices into the legislature? Trevor Davies/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO , Apr 30 2013 (IPS)

As Zimbabwe’s young politicians increase their demands to be allowed to play a greater role in the running of the country, analysts say that this could signal a change in youth voter apathy in the upcoming elections.   

“Young people are beginning to see politics differently,” Tinaye Juru, a political analyst working in Bulawayo, told IPS.

“We are seeing a shift from accepting being called tomorrow’s leaders to (having the youth) ask ‘Why wait till tomorrow, when we can do this today?’” Juru said.

Elections in this southern African nation are expected sometime after Jun. 29 when the parliament’s term ends.

And many feel this election could be an opportunity for young people to enter active politics as legislators – that is if their political parties yield to growing demands to include them more actively.

Historically, young politicians here have been confined to campaigning for senior party officials.

Youth participation in Zimbabwe’s elections is low, according to the international rights and democracy NGO Freedom House. A June 2012 report by the organisation, titled “Change and ‘New’ Politics in Zimbabwe”, noted that there are “disproportionately low levels of voter registration in the two age categories of 18 to 25 years and 26 to 35 years old.”

In a country where, according to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, up to 60 percent of the population is under 35, this is a matter of great concern.

There has already been an outcry within the Movement for Democratic Change led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) against senior party officials who have not performed well. The party’s Youth Assembly, its youth wing, has demanded that the MDC-T hold its own primary elections to select candidates to contest seats for parliament in the upcoming elections.

Previously, sitting candidates within the party did not face any internal contest for their seats in the legislature and simply sought re-election. But the MDC-T Youth Assembly has said that the youth could do a better job for the party and their country and suggested a youth quota for parliament.

Clifford Hlatshwayo, the MDC-T Youth Assembly national secretary for information, told IPS: “We want seats set aside for youths. This is the only way this will prepare us (young people) for the future if we are to rule this country.”

The same situation exists within the MDC led by Welshman Ncube, a breakaway faction of the original MDC. Aspiring candidates in its youth league ranks are being frustrated by officials who have dismissed them as “nuisances”, one youth wing member told IPS on the condition of anonymity.

“We were asked, along with other aspiring candidates, by the party to submit our nomination papers for the primaries. But, curiously, our submission papers went missing,” he said.

While on the other hand, President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF), has been accused of suppressing the younger generation and preventing them from rising within the party’s ranks.

A senior Zanu-PF youth league official in Bulawayo, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told IPS that it was tough to break through the party’s glass ceiling as those who did not fight in the war of liberation were not highly rated by the party’s senior members. Between 1964 and 1979 Zimbabweans fought for independent rule from the then Rhodesian government of Ian Smith.

“There are still old people in the party who think that if you challenge them in the primary elections, you are undermining them,” he said.

“In the end, we just sit back and do our best to campaign for the party. Even the younger MPs in the party do not take kindly to criticism and are quick to claim we are (acting on behalf of) one faction or another (when we oppose them), and it’s become something that we do not discuss.”

Philemon Ncube, a priest and political analyst in Bulawayo, told IPS that political parties needed to do more to ensure that the youth were able to lead. “No mechanisms have been put in place by all political parties to encourage leadership renewal and this will make it difficult for youths to break into the ranks.”

But not all young people have welcomed the idea of being governed by their peers.

“Young people have seen the benefits of public office from parliamentarians who are always demanding ridiculous perks from the (treasury),” Nathan Molife, a 22-year-old student at the National University of Science and Technology, told IPS.

“Their motives have become marred by our politics where many believe no politician should be poor, never mind the level of poverty the people live in. Maybe I will vote for a younger MP, maybe I won’t. I don’t know,” Molife said, showing mistrust in politicians in general.

According to a 2012 survey by Afrobarometer, an African research organisation, over the years a suspicion for politicians has become the major reason for voter apathy in Zimbabwe.

According to the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, a mere 18 percent of young people of voting age have completed the registration process.

And only an estimated 43 percent of registered young people voted in the disputed March 2008 election. According to international rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, Mugabe had perpetrated widespread violence against political opponents in the run-up to and after the country’s 2008 presidential elections. Mugabe was declared winner.

Analysts said, however, that if young voters remained apathetic this year, it could set back attempts to actively engage the youth in the democratic process as candidates.

“It would be fairly easy for young people to vote for one of their own, but if these same people do not register to exercise their (right to vote), it is difficult to see how the ambitions of creating a new breed of legislators will be realised,” Juru said.

Tymon Ndlovu of the National Youth Development Trust, an NGO based in Bulawayo, told IPS that it was of concern that in the excitement to take up positions as legislators, female faces are missing.

“Local politics remains male-dominated despite all the talk about equal representation. But I believe these elections would be an opportunity to see aspiring young female politicians coming out. But it’s obvious this is not happening,” he said.

*This story was produced in conjunction with the Heinrich Böll Foundation and appears in their Perspectives report.

The post Zimbabwe’s Politics – Out with the Old, in with the New appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Muzeka Muyeyekwa from Mapfekera Village in Zimbabwe’s  Manicaland Province wonders what he will feed his three children for lunch.

The family’s basic food supplies have run out and they cannot replenish them as the bridge that crosses the local Nyadira River, which links this village with the outside world and the Watsomba shopping centre, was washed away in January during the flash floods that spread across the country. Manicaland Province, which borders Mozambique, is among the worst hit as it has seen almost 1 metre of rain since mid-January.

However, a few village daredevils have used the disaster to make a quick dollar by swimming across the flooded river with supplies – charging treble the price or more for basic goods.

“We cannot cross the river to go to the grinding mill or to get basic food supplies,” Muyeyekwa tells IPS. “The only supplies reaching us are the expensive items brought by the daredevils.”

Other villagers say that their food supplies are running low and worry that the authorities are not acting fast enough to repair the bridge.

But the local district council chief executive, George Bandure, tells IPS that the council is mobilising resources for the reconstruction of the destroyed bridge.

Mapfekera community is not the only one struggling to cope with unseasonal heavy rains here.

According to the latest United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report on Zimbabwe, heavy January rainfall across the country affected an estimated 8,490 people, “of which 4,615 people require humanitarian assistance in the form of emergency shelter and non-food items.”

The government’s Civil Protection Unit estimates that up to 5,000 people across the country lost their homes in the flooding, while the police say about 100 people have drowned – all since late last year.

Nearly 2,000 school children in the Chiredzi and Mwenezi Districts in Masvingo Province are being taught outside as torrential rainfall recently destroyed classrooms in 28 schools.

Clifford Tshuma, a smallholder farmer in rural Gwanda, in Matabeleland South Province, stands by and watches the effect that a surprise heavy downpour has on his maize crop. It flattens the stalks, leaving the plants ruined.

“I did not see it coming,” Tshuma tells IPS.

Climate experts in this southern African nation say that the plight of rural populations is worsened by the lack of sufficient weather monitoring systems that are able to provide early awareness of rainfall levels.

“Zimbabwe sometimes finds itself less equipped to predict, unprepared to plan for, and respond to floods,” Sobona Mtisi, a climate researcher with the Overseas Development Institute’s Water Policy Programme, tells IPS. The institute has partnered with the Zimbabwean government to formulate climate change policy. “Early warning systems that focus on floods are not yet well developed, especially at the local level. These factors combine to ensure that the country is always caught off guard.”

Since mid-January, heavy rains have hit Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland South and North Provinces as well as Masvingo Province, which are traditionally considered dry areas.

According to the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services, the Matabeleland South and North Provinces have seen rainfall of around 300 millimetres since the beginning of the year – at least three times higher than the expected rainfall for the provinces.

“This is much lower than other provinces,” Zimbabwe Meteorological Services chief, Tich Zinyemba, tells IPS, pointing to Manicaland Province, which borders Mozambique and has recorded up to 1,000 millimetres during the same period. “But [the rainfall in Matabeleland] is still unusually high for such arid regions.”

Adjusting to a new reality

Until the rains began in mid-January, the Matabeleland South and North Provinces were in the midst of a drought. Local online publication Bulawayo24 News reported that between July and December 2012 some 9,000 cattle in the Matabeleland South region had died due to the ongoing drought. Now they are perishing because of the ensuing floods, the publication reported.

“Floods are recent phenomena in Zimbabwe, and as such, the country is still adjusting to this new reality,” Mtisi says, explaining that floods began occurring here in 2000 when Cyclone Eline swept across southern Africa.

Mtisi says that the occurrence of heavy rains, which leave destruction in their wake, has become somewhat predictable over the past decade. He adds that with adequate preparation, these losses can be averted or minimised.

“From 2000 to 2010, Zimbabwe had four floods, some of which induced by cyclones, such as Cyclone Eline (in 2000) and Cyclone Japhet (in 2003). This means that we have a flood, every two and a half years,” Mtisi says.

“The problem is that Zimbabwe does not have sufficient resources, mainly technical and financial, to predict, plan for, and manage floods. I do not think that the hydro-meteorological monitoring departments of Zimbabwe National Water Authority, Meteorological Department, and the Civil Protection Department have adequate funds to efficiently undertake flood preparedness and management activities,” he says.

Mtisi says that despite efforts by international relief agencies to mitigate these loses, more still needs to be done.

“Although several systems for monitoring hydro-meteorological data are in place, managed by regional and international bodies, such as the Famine Early Warning Systems Network and the Southern African Development Community Hydrological Cycle Observing System, they are insufficient,” Mtisi says.

It will be useful for Zimbabwe to develop an extensive network of hydro-meteorological stations that monitor river flows and floods, he says, through agencies such as the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services and the Zimbabwe National Water Authority.

Very high frequency systems are currently being installed in the country’s flood-prone areas to ensure that the people there are able to communicate with different disaster management units that are meant to warn them of high rainfall and potential disasters.

The point now is how to ensure these systems are operational and working properly, says Tapuwa Gomo, a development expert who has worked with international relief agencies in some of Zimbabwe’s flood-prone area.

*Additional Reporting by Nyarai Mudimu in Manicaland Province

The post Water, Water Everywhere – and No Early Warning in Sight appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Gertrude Mkoloi earns a living harvesting maize on a small piece of land in rural Zimbabwe. Or at least she used to.

Female subsistence farmers, who form more than 70 percent of farmers on the continent, remain clueless about climate change issues. Credit:Busani Bafana

Deep in rural Binga, more than 400 km from the country’s second-largest city, Bulawayo, Mkoloi stared blankly at her maize crop, scorched brown by the sun during what was meant to be the rainy season.

“This is what I have for my labour,” she said, pointing to charred maize stalks that failed to grow tassels – a cluster of male maize flowers required for pollination.

“No one here tells us anything about planning for the cropping season, but what we know is that the rains have shifted,” she said. It is a common complaint among women farmers in this southern African nation, as the bulk of local agriculture remains rain-fed.

According to the Meteorological Service Department, rainfall across the country has declined, while temperatures have risen in the past few years. And this has meant that the traditional agricultural seasons have shifted.

Rural women, who according to the Ministry of Agriculture make up more than 70 percent of food growers here, have experienced failed harvests in recent years due to radically changing rainfall patterns.

In April, Minister of Agriculture Joseph Made announced that this year’s maize harvests had shrunk by 26 percent, due to poor rainfall. And the government has already warned that food insecurity could lead to fatalities.

In another southern African country, Angola, millions are facing critical food insecurity as a prolonged dry spell across large parts of the country destroyed harvests and killed off livestock in the first three months of this year. Up to 500,000 children are now thought to be suffering from severe malnutrition triggered by the collapse in food production.

And the situation is likely to worsen. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has predicted that challenges posed by climate change will result in reduced agricultural yields in sub- Saharan Africa by between 20 and 50 percent by 2050.

But female subsistence farmers like Mkoloi, who according to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa make up more than 70 percent of farmers on the continent, remain clueless about climate change issues. And there is little or no government intervention in Zimbabwe to aid them.

Hazel Gumpo, a smallholder farmer affiliated to the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union and a gender activist, said that more needed to be done to educate women about the changing climate.

“There is no doubt in my mind that women are feeding the nation through farming activities. But there is very little or no knowledge sharing for us to understand and deal with the impacts of climate change,” Gumpo said.

In April the Minister of Agriculture Joseph Made announced that this year’s maize harvests had reduced by 26 percent, due to poor rainfall. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

It is one of the reasons there are growing calls for southern African countries to urgently adopt a gender perspective as an aspect of climate change policy.

Gender Links, a southern African non-governmental organisation focusing on gender equality, plans to lobby for the approval of an addendum to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Gender and Development. The protocol is a regional instrument that advances gender equality and women’s rights.

While the protocol does not mention climate change specifically, it has provisions that can be used to advance a climate justice agenda. For example, Articles 12 and 13 are about governance and providing for the equal representation of women in all spheres of decision-making.

The preamble of the protocol underlines the need for the elimination of gender inequality in the region and the promotion of the “full and equal enjoyment of rights” and Gender Links argues that the same set of demands can be fought for within the climate change debate.

“Women’s voices and interests need to be amplified in the policy-making around climate change, not least because they are the most vulnerable to climate change because of their different social roles and status,” Gender Links argued.

Many hope that the addendum will be ratified at the SADC Heads of States Summit in Mozambique in August.

The climate change addendum will seek knowledge empowerment for women, especially those in rural areas. And it is something sorely needed in the region, analysts say.

“There is still a lot to be done as far as empowering rural women in the region goes,” said Nonhlanhla Siziba, a gender policy researcher in Bulawayo.

“At least adopting climate change policy issues concerning mitigation measures at that level could mean that governments like Zimbabwe are compelled to work closely with subsistence farmers,” Siziba told IPS.

Mandla Mhlanga, a climate change researcher at the University of Zimbabwe, told IPS that many African countries have been slow to adopt policy issues concerning climate change even though “this phenomenon has been affecting the agriculture sector for decades now.”

“That SADC is being pushed to adopt it now as a policy issue aimed at addressing and improving women’s livelihoods is a step in the right direction. It is also important that this comes at a time when Zimbabwe is formulating its own climate change policy,” Mhlanga said.

But it could still be some time before subsistence farmers like Mkoloi reap the benefits.

Gumpo said: “People like using clichés about how the empowering of women translates into empowering the nation. But we have not seen such empowerment, as talk has been concentrated in political positions and not development where it really matters.”

Meanwhile, Mkoloi has no option but to go ahead and plant her crop for the next season. However, her burnt field of maize is a stark reminder of the uncertain future she faces.

“We are already planning to prepare the land for the next planting season. But we still do not know when the rainy season will start in light of what happened last time,” Mkoloi said.

*Additional reporting by Busani Bafana in Bulawayo.

(END)

The post Nothing to Show for Hard Work but Burnt Fields of Maize appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Ignatius Banda
PLUMTREE, Zimbabwe, Mar 22 2012 (IPS)

Job Mthombeni loves traditional food. One of his favourite culinary delights is Mopani worms, referred to locally as amacimbi, which means caterpillar in Ndebele. At an early age he understood the nutritional value of the worm, which is found in his rural hometown of Plumtree, in southwestern Zimbabwe.

The Mopani worm is the protein-rich caterpillar of the Emperor moth, which can supplement any diet. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

But as the lack of rain continues to cause havoc with the harvests in this southern African nation, it is now also affecting the supply of Mopani worms. And 49-year-old Mthombeni is a concerned man.

“There are no Mopani worms this year,” he complained. Already this year’s low harvest in Plumtree has meant that he has to live off the groceries sent to him by his children working in neighbouring Botswana.

“The Mopani worms I have tasted this year are not from my area. We always thought things like the Mopani worms would always be there, but look now…The poor rains have chased away our food,” he told IPS.

Zimbabwe has experienced poor rains over the past few years. Though the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services Department had predicted rainfall would peak from October to December 2011, only parts of the country experienced heavy rains, while southwestern Zimbabwe conversely had low rainfall during this time.

This past week, rain fell across the country. But it has come long after farmers planted their crop, and much of the maize harvest was destroyed as a result.

The situation in Zimbabwe is typical of the region, as countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have been hit with wildly uneven rainfall patterns this rainy season. Madagascar and Mozambique have had a deluge of rain, thanks to Cyclone Giovanna, while countries like Mauritius and Zimbabwe have had low or no rainfall this season.

Bradwell Garanganga, from the SADC Climate Services Centre, explained that there is a finite amount of water available, and when it rains heavily in one area, the water is drawn from somewhere else.

“The amount of water that is available is virtually constant so, if it rains hard someplace, it means there is somewhere where the rain is not occurring. That, in summary, is what has been occurring in the SADC region in terms of rainfall,” he said.

“This particular year has not been too good … If you were to draw a line from Gwanda, in Zimbabwe, to Francistown, in Botswana, all the way back to the southern part of Zimbabwe, that area has been extremely dry,” he said.

Mopani worms thrive on fertile conditions and gorge themselves on lush green vegetation. But the disappearance of their environment could mean thousands of villagers in Plumtree, and other areas of the country that have seen poor rains, will be deprived of a vital source of nutrition in the years to come.

“It’s not only about the loss of vegetation, and the declining numbers of Mopani worms. It is also about the loss of a major source of protein in the diet of many rural and urban people as well as a loss of income,” said Sobona Mtisi, a climate change researcher with the Overseas Development Institute, which is also leading the Zimbabwean government’s climate change policy formulation with the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

“This has adverse implications for people’s health and income. Are we going to see an increase of diseases linked to a low-protein diet?” Mtisi asked.

While the rainy season has always brought with it an abundance of culinary choices for rural communities, it also provides a boost for rural economies.

Wendy Zulu is one of the rural women traders who earn their living selling Mopani worms. She makes seasonal trips to the city of Bulawayo, where she sells a variety of wares. But it is the proceeds from her sales of Mopani worms that form a substantial part of her income.

“I am yet to make the trip since the rainy season was supposed to begin late last year,” Zulu said.

In the past, because of their economic value, when there was an abundance of Mopani worms, farmers and land owners would charge rural women traders like Zulu a fee to harvest them. Now, because of the lack of rainfall, there are hardly any to be seen.

“With poor rains, it has meant there is no green vegetation for these creatures. So I just have to wait and see what happens in the coming weeks, even months,” Zulu told IPS. Many miles away in Bulawayo, consumers like Moffat Bancinyane, who over the years have enjoyed Mopani worms as an affordable culinary preference, can only wonder why they have become scarce.

“You can never understand why a thing like amacimbi can be out of stock. Come on, these things grow on trees,” Bancinyane said after being told by a vendor outside a municipal beer hall that Mopani worms were not available.

“It is true what they say about the rains, that they give life in the most unexpected forms,” Bancinyane said.

The scarcity of Mopani worms could just be an indication of a deeper crisis spurred by climate change, Mtisi said.

In 2005, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that climate change would result in increasing aridity in southern Africa, one of the most populous parts of the continent. It also predicted that food production in countries like Zimbabwe would halve by 2020.

Despite their scarcity, Mopani worms remain big business in other parts of southern African. In Botswana it is a multi-million dollar industry, and South Africa harvests up to 1.6 million kilogrammes of Mopani worms annually.

*Additional reporting by Zukiswa Zimela in Johannesburg.

The post Zimbabwe’s Mopani Worms Disappearing from Rural Diets appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Ignatius Banda
PLUMTREE, Zimbabwe, Mar 2 2012 (IPS)

Beauty Moyo’s desire for access to water has finally been met. The rains that fell in the past week after a long dry patch have awakened this small-holder farmer deep in rural Plumtree, Zimbabwe on the border with Botswana to the reality of sparse rainfall, climate change and how she and her fellow villagers can respond.

Women in rural Zimbabwe are coming up with solutions to water shortages aggravated by climate change. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

Plumtree, like most parts of southwestern Zimbabwe, is notorious for low rainfall. But millions of farmers in the country rely on rain-fed agriculture and food they grow themselves, which presents villagers like Moyo with tough choices.

“The rains that fell this week have been able to bring back hope as we had sunk our own reservoir to trap the water,” Moyo said.

She says she teamed up with other neighbours during the course of the year, and they invested their energies in digging what looks like a miniature golf-course waterway.

“This idea came after people realised we have been complaining each year about poor rainfall and harvests,” Moyo told IPS.

This reservoir water is used in farming activities where the subsistence farmers say instead of spraying the whole field with water, they now water individual plants.

“It’s a lot of work, but it helps conserve our water,” said Susan Mathebula, another villager working on the project with Moyo.

“We had heavy rains that we had not seen in a long time, with ice falling, and we were able to trap the water in this small catchment we set up ourselves,” Mathebula told IPS in mid-February.

While drinking water is available from such sources as boreholes, Mathebula says their major concern is water for irrigation purposes, as they plant their own food and cannot rely on rainfall alone for the maize and groundnuts they grow in their small fields.

Plumtree is one of the areas lying on the southwestern belt that experienced localised heavy downpours in the last week of February, with the Zimbabwe Meteorological Service Department announcing that the nation should expect more rainfall in the next two months.

Hope is returning that the water they have will ensure adequate household food security at a time when humanitarian agencies such as the Famine Early Warning System – Network (FEWS-NET) announced early this year that millions of Zimbabweans will require food aid.

Climate change that has pushed rains in Zimbabwe far into the new year. Credit: Busani Bafana/ IPS

Climate change and water shortages are among the issues being debated at a two-week session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) Feb. 25 through Mar. 7 at U.N. headquarters in New York, which is focusing on the empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication and sustainable development.

Aid agencies have tied food insecurity to climate change that has pushed rains in Zimbabwe far into the new year, when many farmers had prepared the land for the planting season in the last quarter of last year.

The rains began to fall in February, and the meteorological department announced that farmers can expect more rains in the next two months.

According the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), women remain in the vanguard of farming in rural areas, which are home to 70 percent of Zimbabweans, and community-based initiatives such as the creation of reservoirs by Moyo, Mathebula and other villagers only highlight the dire circumstances these women find themselves in, with little assistance from government and nongovernmental organisations.

Josephine Conjwayo, an agricultural field officer from the Ministry of Agriculture who works with small-holder farmers, said harnessing water for agriculture by rural communities in response to climate change challenges has been limited by the absence of experts in rural areas.

“Every area (in Matebeleland) we have visited to assess farming activities, the issue of low rainfall and suffering crops is typical. Trapping rainwater is one of the measures we have encouraged for these women, but this water tends to be exhausted quickly as people use it for purposes other than farming,” Conjwayo said.

What has exacerbated the challenges faced by small-holders such as Mathebula is the inability by government and farming organisations to set up strategies for small-holders to respond to climate change, resulting in villagers coming up with their own initiatives.

The Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union says rural small-holder farmers are providing the bulk of maize consumed in urban areas, as these farmers do not sell their produce at the Grain Marketing Board, and laments the lack of government support for farmers.

Last year, the Climate and Development Knowledge Network partnered with the Zimbabwean government to map climate change policy, and according to preliminary research, changing rainfall patterns are expected, as well as temperature increases and extreme weather events such as floods and droughts.

It is these circumstances villagers in Plumtree are experiencing, and Mathebula, Moyo and many others respond the only way they know how: thinking on their feet.

“There is very little we can do here,” Moyo told IPS. “But we hope the water we trap will last us long enough to see our crops grow,” she said as she tended the small maize crop that is beginning to sprout after the recent downpours.

The post ZIMBABWE: Farmers Tackle Water Problems Fuelled by Climate Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Bulawayo only has a 20-month supply of water left if the seasonal rains do not come. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
PLUMTREE, Mar 2 2012 (IPS)

Beauty Moyo’s desire for access to water has finally been met. The rains that fell in the past week after a long dry patch have awakened this small-holder farmer deep in rural Plumtree, Zimbabwe on the border with Botswana to the reality of sparse rainfall, climate change and how she and her fellow villagers can respond.

Plumtree, like most parts of southwestern Zimbabwe, is notorious for low rainfall. But millions of farmers in the country rely on rain-fed agriculture and food they grow themselves, which presents villagers like Moyo with tough choices.

“The rains that fell this week have been able to bring back hope as we had sunk our own reservoir to trap the water,” Moyo said.

She says she teamed up with other neighbours during the course of the year, and they invested their energies in digging what looks like a miniature golf-course waterway.

“This idea came after people realised we have been complaining each year about poor rainfall and harvests,” Moyo told IPS.

This reservoir water is used in farming activities where the subsistence farmers say instead of spraying the whole field with water, they now water individual plants.

“It’s a lot of work, but it helps conserve our water,” said Susan Mathebula, another villager working on the project with Moyo.

“We had heavy rains that we had not seen in a long time, with ice falling, and we were able to trap the water in this small catchment we set up ourselves,” Mathebula told IPS in mid-February.

While drinking water is available from such sources as boreholes, Mathebula says their major concern is water for irrigation purposes, as they plant their own food and cannot rely on rainfall alone for the maize and groundnuts they grow in their small fields.

Plumtree is one of the areas lying on the southwestern belt that experienced localised heavy downpours in the last week of February, with the Zimbabwe Meteorological Service Department announcing that the nation should expect more rainfall in the next two months.

Hope is returning that the water they have will ensure adequate household food security at a time when humanitarian agencies such as the Famine Early Warning System – Network (FEWS-NET) announced early this year that millions of Zimbabweans will require food aid.

Climate change and water shortages are among the issues being debated at a two-week session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) Feb. 25 through Mar. 7 at U.N. headquarters in New York, which is focusing on the empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication and sustainable development.

Aid agencies have tied food insecurity to climate change that has pushed rains in Zimbabwe far into the new year, when many farmers had prepared the land for the planting season in the last quarter of last year.

The rains began to fall in February, and the meteorological department announced that farmers can expect more rains in the next two months.

According the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), women remain in the vanguard of farming in rural areas, which are home to 70 percent of Zimbabweans, and community-based initiatives such as the creation of reservoirs by Moyo, Mathebula and other villagers only highlight the dire circumstances these women find themselves in, with little assistance from government and nongovernmental organisations.

Josephine Conjwayo, an agricultural field officer from the Ministry of Agriculture who works with small-holder farmers, said harnessing water for agriculture by rural communities in response to climate change challenges has been limited by the absence of experts in rural areas.

“Every area (in Matebeleland) we have visited to assess farming activities, the issue of low rainfall and suffering crops is typical. Trapping rainwater is one of the measures we have encouraged for these women, but this water tends to be exhausted quickly as people use it for purposes other than farming,” Conjwayo said.

What has exacerbated the challenges faced by small-holders such as Mathebula is the inability by government and farming organisations to set up strategies for small-holders to respond to climate change, resulting in villagers coming up with their own initiatives.

The Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union says rural small-holder farmers are providing the bulk of maize consumed in urban areas, as these farmers do not sell their produce at the Grain Marketing Board, and laments the lack of government support for farmers.

Last year, the Climate and Development Knowledge Network partnered with the Zimbabwean government to map climate change policy, and according to preliminary research, changing rainfall patterns are expected, as well as temperature increases and extreme weather events such as floods and droughts.

It is these circumstances villagers in Plumtree are experiencing, and Mathebula, Moyo and many others respond the only way they know how: thinking on their feet.

“There is very little we can do here,” Moyo told IPS. “But we hope the water we trap will last us long enough to see our crops grow,” she said as she tended the small maize crop that is beginning to sprout after the recent downpours. (END)

The post ZIMBABWE: Farmers Tackle Water Problems Fuelled by Climate Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Sibongile Dube knows the devastation heavy rain can leave in its wake. A villager in the lowveld area of Mberengwa in Zimbabwe’s Midlands province, Dube’s home is one of many that were washed away by flash floods last year.

The Zambezi River Authority told villagers living downstream on the Zambezi (pictured) to evacuate their homes because of possible flooding. Credit: Zukiswa Zimela/IPS

“I am still rebuilding my home,” Dube told IPS, pointing to where she has erected a hut that she says serves as her bedroom.

Across the small yard stands a shaky-looking grain storage bin, which has become symbolic of the devastation that swept away thousands of tonnes of grain in last year’s floods.

Hundreds of schools and villages were washed away amid criticism of Zimbabwe’s disaster preparedness and effective early warning systems. This was despite earlier warnings that the floods, which had already left a trail of destruction in their wake in countries that lie along the Zambezi River in Southern Africa, were headed for some parts of the country.

“We were never told that the water would be that bad. We lost livestock and the grain we had harvested,” Dube said, highlighting the plight of thousands of villagers who remain victims not only of natural disasters but also poor early warning and disaster monitoring systems in Zimbabwe.

While rains have only begun to fall in some parts of the country, the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services have given conflicting reports of when to expect it to reach its peak. Initially the service first said December 2011, but then revised this to early January, then again to late January.

Zimbabwe Meteorological Services chief, Tich Zinyemba, has also reversed an adverse forecast issued that warned of imminent floods. He said in late January that the cyclone, which had been expected to reach Zimbabwe last month, had since moved back to Mozambique.

Zinyemba’s latest forecast came despite a warning issued by the Zambezi River Authority that parts of the Zambezi River, which flows through Zimbabwe, would experience floods and advised villagers to prepare for evacuation to higher ground.

This week, experts from the government’s weather services department announced the cyclone from neighbouring Mozambique was no longer headed for Zimbabwe. While villagers are no longer being prepared for the possibility of heavy downpours, for Dube and many others, the threat of rain destroying their homes remains a real threat.

These conflicting weather reports have exposed the country’s lack of preparedness for possible floods.

“We do not know anymore when the rains would fall and how bad it would be,” Dube told IPS, expressing a popular sentiment here as many have lost faith in the reliability of weather forecasts from the meteorological services.

The Civil Protection Unit, a government department responsible for, among other things, evacuating of communities from flood areas, also issued a flood warning last month. The unit has been severely criticised for failing to respond in time to the distress of villagers like Dube, last year.

“There is lack of adequate expertise and the usual lack of resources that is why we even fail to have such things as helicopters to assist our people during floods,” Tymon Ruzende, a disaster preparedness expert who worked with the Red Cross during last year’s floods, told IPS.

“But I also think there is little in terms of preparing communities deal with the prospect of flooding. For example when it is already known the waters will rise, communities must be told to move to higher ground, yet others always resist this,” Ruzende told IPS.

This year, communities that lie along the giant Zambezi basin once again find themselves at the centre of rising waters.

It is here in the Zambezi basin in areas such as Binga, an inaccessible and remote district in northern Zimbabwe, where communities have previously been victim of flooding despite clear signs that the banks would burst.

Jairos Lubimbi, a local councillor, said not much is being done to prepare villagers in the eventuality of floods.

“People here have always lived with floods and it is something which the authorities think is natural and they cannot do anything about saving lives, grain and livestock,” Lubimbi told IPS.

Last month, the Zambezi River Authority told villagers living downstream on the Zambezi to evacuate their homes, but villagers who spoke to IPS said they were still in their homes because “they had nowhere to go.”

“They tell us to move to higher ground, but do not provide alternative homes for us,” said distraught Taboka Sibanda, a villager.

Floods have already moved from Mozambique into South Africa and according to some media reports, the rising waters have claimed up to 20 lives. Concerns remain about possible localised flooding in Zimbabwe.

Experts say Zimbabwe’s shifting climate patterns that have moved the rain season further into the New Year. They say that this has made it difficult to prepare for possible floods as the country lacks state of the art weather tracking systems. This comes amid calls by the United Nations for all early warning systems to be community centred.

The post ZIMBABAWE: Not Prepared for Floods Amid Conflicting Weather Forecasts appeared first on Inter Press Service.

From downtown shops that stock cheap clothing and shoes that fall apart after one wear, to mining concessions in platinum, gold and diamonds – the Chinese finger is now in virtually every Zimbabwean pie.

In 2008, bread cost 35 million Zimbabwean dollars and the country began printing large bills like this 100 billion dollar one. Credit: Wikicommons

From city sidewalks to low-income suburbs, the Chinese have become part of the local population, and if some senior government bureaucrats have their way, the country could soon find itself adopting the Chinese Yuan as its official currency.

For some influential monetary policy czars, the massive assailing of the Zimbabwean economy by the Chinese now only requires the Yuan to strengthen these economic reconstruction efforts.

Invited by President Robert Mugabe as part of his infamous 2004 “Look East” policy to participate in driving the economy and employment creation, after relations with former traditional investment partners the European Union and United States soured, China has been able to create its own little sphere of influence and establish an ubiquitous presence in Zimbabwe.

This is despite being unpopular with Zimbabwe’s industrial and commercial players, and general members of the public who accuse the Chinese of poor labour practices and shoddy goods and services.

Late last year, Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono, seen by many as a close ally of Mugabe, announced he was in favour of having the Chinese Yuan as the country’s official currency. After the Zimbabwean dollar was suspended in 2008, the country has been using a multi-currency regime, which includes the use of the U.S. greenback, the South African Rand and the Botswana Pula.

According to Gono, the Chinese Yuan would be introduced alongside the Zimbabwean dollar. Mugabe’s political supporters have been calling for currency reforms to bring back the Zimbabwean dollar.

“With the continuous firming of the Chinese Yuan, the U.S. dollar is fast ceasing to be the world’s reserve currency and the Euro-Zone debt crisis has made things even worse. As a country, we still have the opportunity to avoid being caught napping by adopting the Chinese Yuan as part of consolidating the country’s “Look East” policy,” Gono told state media in November last year.

“It’s only recently when we had the startling revelations with Angola offering to bail out her former colonial master Portugal from her debt crisis. This can also happen with Zimbabwe if we choose the right path,” Gono said.

He continued: “If we continue with our “Look East” policy, it will not be long when we will also be volunteering to bail out Britain from her debt crisis and I will not wait for my creator’s day before this happen. There is no doubt that the Yuan, with its ascendancy, will be the 21st century’s world reserve currency.”

Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front officials see huge potential in using the Yuan, citing the growth of the Chinese economy under BRICS, which brings together emerging global economic powerhouses Brazil, India, China and South Africa.

But not everyone is as upbeat about such prospects.

There are concerns that this could mean “handing over” the country to the Chinese who already have been offered huge mining rights by Mugabe despite protests from his coalition government partners. The country’s Finance Minister Tendai Biti has said that Mugabe is forfeiting state resources to China, whom critics are calling Africa’s new coloniser.

Economist Eric Bloch told IPS “it is not practical” for Zimbabwe to adopt the Chinese Yuan.

“Zimbabwe won’t have any interaction with international markets as the U.S. dollar remains the standard currency in international trade,” Bloch told IPS.

With China increasingly being touted to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy, the temptation to embrace all things Chinese has proven too much to resist for poor economies across the globe, contends Tafara Zivanayi, an economics lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe.

“There has been false hope given to Chinese economic growth with many African countries imagining they can transfer this growth to their own economies,” Zivanayi told IPS.

“Such decisions (to adopt a foreign currency) as usually based on international trade indices and monetary policies of the country where the currency is domiciled. Even if there have been projections that the Chinese economy will surpass the U.S. economy, this won’t happen overnight,” Zivanayi told IPS.

“There are still concerns about Chinese penetration of international, especially low income, markets and creating wealth for itself and not host countries,” Zivanayi said.

Even traders who have long ridiculed cheap Chinese products and have no grasp of international trade intricacies find themselves offering opinions about the prospects of adopting the Chinese Yuan.

“As long as things have worked fine for us using the American dollar, why change that formula?” Thabani Moyo, a commuter omnibus driver. His colleagues, who are struggling to handle giving change in the varying currencies of the dollar, the South African rand and the Botswana Pula, nodded in agreement

Zimbabwe does not have coins of the various currencies and shops and retailers struggle to give their customers change.

Gono and other opponents of the US greenback cited this lack of change in coins as a reason why Zimbabwe needed to adopt a single currency or revert to its own, useless dollar.

However, during the presentation of the national budget for the 2012 fiscal year, Biti told parliament that Zimbabwe would continue using the dollar until the economy stabilised.

Not everyone supports the introduction of the Chinese Yuan. “We want real money, not zhing-zhong,” taxi driver Jourbet Buthelezi told IPS, referring to the pejorative term Zimbabweans use for sub-standard Chinese goods.

The post ZIMBABWE: To Yuan or Not to Yuan, That is the Question appeared first on Inter Press Service.