This bleak situation came out at a meeting for senators recently, ahead of a key post-climate change summit expected to be hosted in 2012 in Zimbabwe.
Based on scientific research including interviews with farmers in the country, Parliament heard grim statistics from the Climate Systems Analysis Group (CSAG), a climatology research group based at University of Cape Town.
It predicted that within the next three decades, the rainy season in Zimbabwe and Limpopo province will start more than a month later, in December instead of in late October.
Zimbabwe is experiencing more hot days and fewer cold days, and the amount of precipitation it receives is deviating from the mean more frequently, the senators were warned. This was a result of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Since 2007, erratic rainfall has led to increased food shortages in Zimbabwe because droughts damaged maize crops.?As a result, Zimbabwe faced a shortfall of one million metric tonnes of maize in 2010. And the country is being forced to import more than half the maize it needs this year to cover a deficit after drought destroyed crops and left the country facing a severe food shortage.
tal experts and African legislators.
According to Senator Sithembile Mlotshwa, an agreement to have Zimbabwe host the summit was reached after a marathon debate by African legislators in Nairobi, Kenya recently.
The senators at the meeting heard that people living in poverty would be worst affected by the effects of climate change.
Mlotshwa said the government needed to make a bigger effort to educate Zimbabweans about climate change and environmentally friendly farming practices.
Contributing to the debate, Senator Alice Chimbudzi said: “I have seen the problem of rainfall in other countries. In Zimbabwe I recall that the problem was in the North but I have looked at the rainy pattern this year, we did not receive adequate rains. We had heavy rainfall initially but at the end we did not have sufficient rainfall. In certain areas in May, there was heavy rainfall. That should make us be prepared for changes in climate. Seasons have changed and it is no longer like what we used to have traditionally.”
“It is my request coming through to this august House that we should make progress on dealing with this issue,” Senator Chimbudzi said. “There is nothing as bad as hunger. If you are hungry, you cannot expect people to do anything. As a country, we must be prepared so that we can solve the problem.”
Senator Chimbudzi urged Parliament to “go to the wards or even various places and teach people about it, once we become knowledgeable about the climate change in this august House.
“I think if we spread this programme and cover the whole country, people can be enlightened,” she said.
She warned it was the poorest of the poor, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit. The Senator said those people were also the least equipped to deal with the effects of such changes.
Senator Mlotswa warned that climate change was also having a direct effect on animals, plants and water.
Post published in: News