In a strategic decision to streamline climate action to all government developmental planning the Climate Change Management Department in The Ministry for Environment, Water & Climate is finalizing a draft national Climate Change Bill.
Officials within the Climate Change Department are seized with the draft finalization pending submission to Cabinet for ratification, in a development that will integrate and coordinate various climate actions under Zimbabwe’s National Climate Change Response Strategy (NCCRS).
Under NCCRS government has come up with a raft of measures including a National Adaptation Plan, Climate Change Fund, Gendered Climate Action Plan, and the Renewable Energy Policy which hang in the balance without a substantive act.
Tapiwa Junior Kamuruko, a climate change scientist says the government’s commitment has been demonstrated by a commitment to global strategies to tackle climate change under the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC), and Kyoto Protocol.
He said to upscale and enhance national efforts to tackle the threat of climate change, the new law will enhance action coordination, policy enforcement, and strategic implementation of mitigation measures.
The bill establishment is the finalization of extensive consultation processes with stakeholders to enhance coordination of climate action efforts as a country -not only as a government but also as individuals, private sector, CSO, and public in tackling climate change.
“Government through His Excellency recognizes climate change as a real threat and is working on a Climate Change Bill that will enforce various climate change policies, low carbon development efforts, and the various efforts but also look at the social aspect and resilience.
“This Bill aims to empower or enforce all these policies that we will mandate for example companies that are high emitters we put a law and checks. Since 2021 we moved from each province and each district to capacitate the local authorities and the government body is and government bodies and there has been a readiness to respond at different levels.
“Under the NDS1 there is a pillar that speaks of environmental natural resource management and resilience which then paves the way for the development of the Climate Change Bill or Act which will be ratified and presented to cabinet hopefully by the second quarter of this year,” he said.
“The country has recently drafted a National Adaptation Plan that tackles topical concerns around climate change which affected local development and resilience to climate change. The government is now streamlining climate change response to all developmental planning from national to subnational levels.”
Governance gaps persist in the implementation of the various climate change policies, with constraints of financing interventions and mitigation measures including the Gendered Climate Action Plan and Renewable Energy Policy among others.
Primarily the Climate Change Department will leverage the Act to operationalise the establishment of the Climate Change Fund to raise finance for various interventions, said Karumuko.
The fund will be instrumental as the government currently faces increased pressure from the global north to ditch fossil fuels and lower carbon emissions without assessing the financial capacity of the Global South to transition to green economies.
“The most key thing is the establishment of the climate change fund which we cannot set up until we gazette a substantial act of parliament. This fund will aid the government or CSOs to tap into the global financing opportunities available because that’s where we see we have challenges.
“So, this act aims to enforce various climate change policies, low carbon development efforts, and the various efforts but also look at the social aspect and resilience. the country will seek to raise more and to tap into the global finance avenues,” he said.
Adding that, “We have realized that the challenge is in the implementation aspect. The global north is telling us to decarbonize, but Zimbabwe needs the energy to develop. We need to be careful before we sign into these global efforts to tackle climate change.”
Rich countries are throwing up roadblocks to poorer Global South nations trying to secure energy supplies without doing more to help them make the green transition. The shift to renewable energy will have profound implications for the developing world, which has vast untapped fossil fuel resources but may be unable to realize their value.
Global North and financing institutions are squeezing credit lines that finance projects based on fossil fuels in a bid to achieve net-zero emissions across their financing portfolios, without due consideration of the capacities of low-income countries.
“The challenge now is we have pressures coming from the Global North they are telling us to decarbonize to abandon our fossil fuel which is coal but what does that mean for Zimbabwe as a developing country as you know we need energy to develop.
“We need to be careful before we sign into these global efforts to tackle climate change,” states Kamuruko.