Undoing climate change policies affecting developing countries
The other seven made a semi-circle while the three of us went straight to Jimmy’s tent. We took him by surprise and we then disarmed him. We then ordered him to summon all the workers and they duly did that. Even their women were called. We told all the men to surrender all the money they had to their women. This area was between Sibankwanzi and Kamativi Tin Mine. We took all the 79 men with us and set for the Zambezi River. Strangely the Rhodesians did not make a follow-up and we walked the rest of the day until early in the morning. When we got to the Zambezi River the problem was crossing as at that time we had dinghies which could carry four people and we had three. But that day we had six people. Then when we had finally crossed and we were heading for our camp JUST when countries in the world thought they were singing from the same hymn book and stanza on the climate change issue after a hard won Paris Agreement of 2015, political developments that ushered in a new dispensation in the United States are likely going to see a major discord in the spirited global fight against climate change especially in developing countries.
While significant strides have been made by countries around the globe to try and minimise the grim effects of the climate change phenomena with more than two decades of negotiating and finding strategies to limit greenhouse gas emissions all that is likely to take a new dimension following the signing last Tuesday by US President Donald Trump of the Energy Independence decree that seeks to undo a slew of former President Barack Obama’s era of climate policies.
Developing countries are at the receiving end of the decree as they have little financial muscle to independently tackle adaptation and mitigation measures and relied on the rich West for resources. The signing by Trump of the decree therefore flew in the face of other nations who thought the world was now in the fast lane of trying to make the environment a lot better for future generations.
Director Climate Change in the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate Mr Washington Zhakata told the Sunday News that the signing by Trump of the decree to undo US climate change policies meant that the US was not going to support developing countries with funds to deal with climate change mitigation and adaptation measures.
“The American Government was expected to be leading in terms of supporting developing countries that have no financial muscle to adopt clean energy mechanisms. So its pulling out means we can no longer bank on them for financial support despite the irony that US is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases. They can’t be relied on.
“The opening of the closed coal mine fields means they are not taking climate change seriously and it is going to impact negatively on those countries that are yet to sign the Paris Agreement that reiterates the need for the globe to work together and ensure temperatures are lowered by two degrees Celsius,” said Mr Zhakata.
He added that the decree by Trump was an affront to the global efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change and was going to impact on financing for adaptation — the Green Climate Fund that the Obama administration had pledged.
He also echoed former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres who helped broker the Paris accord that the decree by Trump was rewinding the climate change clock to the preParis Agreement.
“Trying to make fossil fuels remain competitive in the face of a booming clean renewable power sector, with the clean air and plentiful jobs it continues to generate, is going against the flow of economics,” said Figueres in a statement.
The order directs the Environment Protection There was the late Gordon Butshe who was the head of counter intelligence in the NSO. He was in the company of other two senior officers (names supplied). I survived because Mabhunu knew me and when they found me alive at Mboroma they were shocked. When the ceasefire was announced I returned to Zimbabwe with the injured and some civilians without my AK-47. I was humiliated I tell you, returning to a Zimbabwe I had fought and sacrificed for unarmed and among the civilians was an insult. When I got to Bulawayo I had to campaign for Zapu as a civilian and I later on moved to the Midlands Province for the campaigns. After the announcement of the results I met Zipra chief of personnel who advised me to go to St Paul’s Assembly Point in Lupane where my detachment had gone. I reunited with guerrillas under the Pamodzi detachment among them Cde Mafutha Ncube, Mak umami t i , Driver, Dwala, KK, John Chironda, Volunteer Mkhwananzi (Andrew Ndlovu), Macmanamara and others. Agency (EPA) to start a formal process to undo the Clean Power Plan, which was introduced by Obama in 2014. The Clean Power Plan required states to collectively cut carbon emissions from power plants by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
Mr Zhakata further stated that the aid cut by America under the Trump administration means that those countries in the developing world that were living off the aid were going to suffer the consequences of climate change more with little relief from a giant that was reneging on making permanent commitments.
The hobnobbing by the Trump administration on the climate change issue is worrying the world especially given that the US is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases. The decree seeks among other things to undo Obama’s Clean Power Plan requiring states to slash carbon emissions from power plants — a critical element in helping the United States meet its commitments to a global climate change accord agreed by nearly 200 countries in Paris in December 2015.
It also rescinds a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, reverse rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production and reduce the weight of climate change in federal agencies assessments of new regulations.
Carbon dioxide and methane are two of the main greenhouse gases blamed by scientists for heating the earth.
This however, was not surprising since even before the presidential campaign last year, Mr Trump had made statements consistent with climate change denial, including claiming climate change a hoax created by China. He has also threatened to formally withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. According to Mr Trump the regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions signed by Mr Obama were job killing especially in the energy sector.
Environment Africa country director Mr Barnabas Mawire said in an interview that the order signed recently by Mr Trump sought to reverse all the gains of the climate change talks at global level.
He said under Article Two of the Paris Agreement the parties agreed to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above preindustrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1,5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.
Mr Mawire said the likelihood was now high that the parties were going to miss the 2 degrees Celsius threshold adding that the American attitude was going to see other countries having an attitude towards the whole thing.
“The parties agreed to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty, including by increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions in a manner that does not threaten food production.
“With the attitude adopted by Trump, we are going to miss the targets. Ironically America is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases and what it means is that the reopening of coal mine fields is going to exacerbate the ill-effects of the gases in the atmosphere, causing more harm to it,” said Mr Mawire. AFRICA needs to reshape its agricultural systems powered by its own robust market and value addition systems that can build a foundation for broadbased, inclusive economic growth and development that can create multiplier effects through the entire economies, agrarian experts say.
Professor Thomas Jayne, a visiting Michigan State University agrarian expert told a public seminar recently at the University of Zimbabwe that Zimbabwe and most other African countries needed a re-think in terms developing new strategies that could raise productivity and profitability of farming.
He said this when he was presenting a paper on: “Megatrends Shaping African Agriculture: Insights and Implications for Enhancing Rural Livelihoods and Food Security in Zimbabwe.”
The Livelihoods and Food Security Programme (LFSP) in collaboration with University of Zimbabwe Faculty of Agriculture hosted the high profile public seminar which drew top agrarian experts from the Sadc region and across the African continent.
Prof Jayne said any efforts to re-fashion the continent’s agricultural systems needed to be sensitive to five inter-related trends that include: rising land scarcity, rise of “investor farmers” (changing farm sizes), rapid growth in food demand, labour force exit from farming and rapid population growth.
“Zimbabwe and most other African countries need to increase their spending on R&D to improve soil fertility, develop new crop varieties and to develop a massive extension system that communicates with farmers,” he said.
The Michigan agrarian expert said Zimbabwe and most African countries needed to move away from archaic and inefficient agricultural systems that were not responsive to the needs of farmers and that were costly and inefficient.
He said strengthening agricultural extension systems, developing mechanisms to minimise post-harvest losses, strengthening local policy institutions, strengthening R&D in universities and research institutions and developing markets and agribusiness were key in reshaping the continent’s agricultural systems.
“Farmers need to have access to affordable finance and an enabling policy environment that can attract private sector investment,” Prof Jayne said.
“We also need to empower and capacitate local research institutions. Africa in 2017 is a changed place, there is a lot of capacity, skill and talent. This needs to be harnessed so that we can move away from the donor dependency syndrome.”
Contributing to the debate, renowned agricultural economist, Prof Mandivamba Rukuni said Africa needed to grow its own domestic market for agricultural products apart from relying on the volatile global commodity markets.
For several years Africa has produced so many so-called “green revolutions” which have failed to generate productive jobs in agriculture and provide a leg up out of poverty for the majority of the poor.
Frustrations over the failing agricultural systems are written all over the faces of the continent’s poor farmers.
In some countries, hopeless peasants are streaming into the cities in huge numbers because it is becoming increasingly difficult to survive on their farms.
Experts say farmers are trapped into using inefficient technologies, average cereal yields have barely increased in 40 years and farm sizes are shrinking.
Those leaving farms are not finding productive jobs in the cities.
Agrarian experts further observe that most are getting poorer, the cost of safety-net programmes is escalating and Africa’s dependence on