THE year 2015 could easily be the year of the heatwave. Or the year of a lion once called Cecil. Or the year of renewed wildlife killings by cyanide poisoning. Could 2015 be the year of the Paris climate talks, instead? It could be anything, really. But the dangerous impacts of climate change – the kind of stuff people connect with only in newspapers or on television – became a reality for all Zimbabweans this year.
As the El Nino – a weather pattern that occurs every few years following a warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean’s surface water – gained strength, temperatures soared to record levels across the country, yielding a wave of heat never before experienced by most Zimbabweans.
From Harare to Chiredzi, Kariba to Mutare, Zimbabweans have fried in the oven since October with multiple health complications, even death. The Meteorological Services Department reported daytime temperatures ranged between 33 and 45 degrees Celsius countrywide, a new record in 60 years.
Now, not only does El Nino alter rainfall patterns worldwide, the heatwave here promises a tough agriculture season this summer, a drought season punctuated by stunted agriculture growth, estimated at just 1,8 percent for 2016.
In an economy that is agro-based, this may also be a promise of food shortages and hunger. But those are only the short-term impacts. With climate change, scientists predict El Nino events will increase in frequency and extremity, causing manifold socio-economic losses in vulnerable African countries.
Power and water cuts
In this year that could be the year of anything, Zimbabweans learnt climate change has potential to change livelihoods in painfully retrogressive ways. Power utility, ZESA, said at the beginning of October that its already inadequate national generation had collapsed 17 percent to 984 megawatts due to climate change-induced water shortages at its main hydroelectric power plant at Kariba, leaving households in the dark for up to 18 hours per day.
The worst is yet to come. With meteorologists forecasting poor rainfall this summer season, ZESA chief executive Josh Chifamba has warned that capacity at Kariba will likely decline from the current 63 percent to as low as 33 percent, or 245 MW, by January 2016.
For residents of Harare, the script gets more twisted. As climate change brings unexpected challenges – like frequent droughts that are drying up water sources – the capital city finds itself facing some serious health problems with its water.
The Harare City Council has recently announced an 18 percent cut in water production to 450 mega-litres per day because it is unable to treat the highly polluted water from Lake Chivero, its main water source, where water levels have markedly receded.
As a result, some townships like Mabvuku and Hatcliffe have been completely cut off, creating a perfect breeding ground for deadly water-borne diseases such as cholera and typhoid. Remember the 2008 cholera outbreak? We buried 4 000 people.
After these experiences, local climate change naysayers will have to reconsider their positions and rally towards enhanced climate action.
Wildlife poaching
Wildlife poaching just could not ease in 2015. As a matter of fact, poachers reorganised, causing the horrendous massacre of over 60 elephants at Hwange National Park in September by cyanide poisoning, reminiscent of the 2013 carnage that claimed 300 elephants.
What could be worse, this was an inside job, planned and carefully executed by “our rangers, highly placed people, safari operators, professional hunters and rural district officials,” according to Environment Minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri.
Authorities have this year shot and killed over 22 poachers who refused to surrender and arrested 900, but poachers have become sophisticated, well funded and well armed – something that is missing at Government level.
As things stand, Government is decidedly losing the war on illegal wildlife killings. A system that engenders corruption can be very difficult to clean up. That’s the tragedy of Zimbabwe’s rich wildlife industry. However, the country early this month received a helicopter, off-track vehicles and other equipment from China to boost anti-poaching response. The use of this equipment should show some results within the next few months.
The elephant is killed for its ivory, a prized possession in Asia and the Far East. The world’s largest land animal is at the centre of a multi-billion-dollar global illegal wildlife trade.
Cecil, the lion
In July of 2015, one American dentist who hunts wild animals for fun killed an aged lion called Cecil in Hwange, sparking a global outrage that made Nigeria’s Chimbok girls’ kidnapping look like child’s play.
Walter Palmer killed a beloved lion, famous with tourists, a subject of study by the UK’s Oxford University. But many locals probably heard of Cecil for the first time after his death.
And how cowardly Palmer slaughtered the collared Cecil, luring the animal for several kilometres to the outskirts of Hwange National Park, where he brutally killed, skinned and cut its head off – all for $50 000.
Now, while it beats the mind why Government has dropped charges against this dentist, the level of publicity generated by Cecil’s death has undoubtedly created interest in wildlife conservation from communities, policymakers, the private sector, civic society and others, both at home and yonder.
A website created to mourn Cecil received over $1 million in donations, guaranteeing the Oxford University’s lions study in Zimbabwe will go on for the next three years, says a recent report in the British newspaper, The Guardian.
The study aims to devise new strategies for anti-poaching.
Here, we hope to see Government getting tougher with poachers, implementing laws and strategies that make it difficult for illegal wildlife killing to thrive.
Paris climate talks
Just a few weeks ago, the world agreed a new climate deal in the French capital, Paris, the culmination of two and half decades of negotiations. The Paris Agreement, which only becomes effective in 2020, aims to limit global temperature rise in this century “well below” two degrees Celsius and to provide a minimum $100 billion per year in climate finance to vulnerable countries in the developing world.
The Paris Agreement has been criticised for lack of ambition and for failing to reign in developed countries to honour their previous and future mitigation and financial obligations.
Further, the accord contains several loopholes and does not guarantee that what’s been agreed on paper will translate into action, particularly given the amount of distrust that exists between rich and poor countries.
Current mitigation goals under the Paris Agreement will result in a temperature increase of between 2,7 and 3,5 degrees Celsius by 2100, indicating the inadequacy of the treaty to curbing global temperature rise to within the limits considered by scientists as safe.
Africa climate tax
In the midst of it all, I am convinced a plan to tax scores of foreign companies extracting minerals in Africa as proposed by Mrs Muchinguri Kashiri at a meeting of African environment ministers in Tanzania in September represents one of the most pragmatic approaches to funding adaptation on the continent ever.
“. . . a levy could be charged especially to multi-lateral companies who have historically caused climate change on all exported extractive natural resources and the funds put into a common fund for adaptation in Africa,” Mrs Muchinguri Kashiri proposed.
Now, here is a plan that departs from the norm; from the business as usual scenario to a revolutionary approach that for long has been missing in the multi-lateral climate negotiations.
In a way, the climate tax indirectly compensates for the inaction from industrialised states. Taxing their companies operating in Africa would be a radically acceptable effective decision, crucial to building a climate-proof continent.
As rich countries dither on climate mitigation and finance, this is the kind of thinking that should begin to occupy Africa’s discourse, understanding that Africa feeds the world’s mineral hunger, but minerals have failed to do the same for millions of its impoverished children.
The year 2015 could be the year for anything, but the future depends on what Africa is willing to do to build climate resilience. The future will be shaped by a people willing to embrace change, and often times difficult change such as the Mrs Muchinguri- Kashiri’s climate tax.
God is faithful.
jeffgogo@gmail.com