Zimbabwe, like many other African countries, is already affected by extreme climatic events such as droughts and floods. This process is expected to become worse as a result of long term changes in climate systems. Whenever they happen, these extreme events negatively impact livelihoods, especially those of the poor who are highly dependent on natural resources.
Munyawiri Ward in Domboshawa, like many communal areas in Zimbabwe, experiences poverty conditions which emanate from a number of socio-economic and environmental factors. The major challenges are food insecurity, poor energy supplies, poor infrastructure and transport, deforestation, land degradation and poor sanitation services. Climate-related ones include water scarcity as a result of recurrent droughts and this has compromised agricultural productivity.
In response to these challenges, the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) and other partners in Europe and South Asia are undertaking an action research, testing tools for community adaptation, knowledge generation and capacity building project on Community-based Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa (CBAA) project, said Shepard Zvigadza, Director of the Zimbabwe Environmental Regional Organization (ZERO).
ACTS is a three-year project being implemented with selected vulnerable communities in Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Sudan, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Its objective is to assist communities to adapt to climate change and share lessons learned from project activities with key stakeholders at local, national, regional and international levels and to elicit their support for climate change adaptation.
Despite generating significant interest, some participants felt that the papers presented at the workshop lacked focus on current trends within each sector visited. This was quite critical in terms of not only providing more recent data for planning and designing purposes for the government and other stakeholders but also provide relevant and necessary linkages with indigenous knowledge systems, especially from rural communities as these systems are still vital today.
Togarasei Fakarayi, working with BirdLife Zimbabwe said: Quite interesting papers indeed but they lacked that incisive analysis of current trends as these provide a more vivid scenario of the present and enables planning and designing for different stakeholders. Current linkages on indigenous knowledge systems, ecosystem and land use patterns, for instance, should have been provided.
Participatory video was also introduced as a new tool that is cheaper, less complex and lighter weight digital and film-making equipment which has become more accessible to even the most remote rural communities. Videos overcome barriers of illiteracy and they also offer a format that is more readily accepted than the written word by some cultures in the developing world.
Post published in: Opinions