Effects of Climate Change in Zimbabwe

1591 Words7 Pages
Zimbabwe has failed to deal with the issue of climate change mainly because of the unavailability of resources (poverty in other words). However although poverty is the most dominant reason for Zimbabwe’s failure to adapt to climate change, several other factors have contributed to the failure only to mention a few; lack of public awareness, incompetence in government and in government structures, political instability as well as poor technology. All these have contributed to a wholesomely poor effort by the Zimbabwean government to address the climate change concern. The economic crises that attacked Zimbabwe since 1990 have led to low government revenue and strained budgets which have inspired less or no focus on climate change adaption policies which have been constantly overlooked in favor of the public’s most immediate needs – water, electricity, food security as well as transport. Very little was therefore invested in concerns such as fertilizers, irrigation, cloud seeding and genetic modification of seed and livestock as adaption strategies to climate change. Zimbabwe’s overall revenue reserve has constantly and severely depleted over the last two decades and this has had a negative impact on formulation of government policies hence government’s forced complacence on the issue of climate change in Zimbabwe. In other words, the government has been forced to overlook climate change as a serious concern due to low income available for budgeting. Figure 1 below (World Bank 2012) shows the revenue trends for Zimbabwe since 1963 up to 2008. In simpler terms, very little funding was available since 1990 for proper policy formulation so there was little done to address the climate change agenda. According to The Center for Climate & Security in an article by Francesco Femia & Caitlin Werrell (2012), the country has weak inter- and intra sectoral
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