Zimbabwe's Climate Change Technical Assistance Program to Help Fill Gaps in Knowledge
Without predictable planting and harvesting seasons, farmers have to devise new strategies for producing food, families have to find alternate sources of nutrition and income, and communities have to find ways to protect those left most vulnerable. The Zimbabwe Reconstruction Fund has recently begun implementation of a $1.5 million Climate Change Technical Assistance (TA) program that seeks to further develop Zimbabwe’s strategies for climate smart agriculture, energy and water use, and forestry. The technical assistance also seeks to mainstream climate change into public investment planning, create a pipeline of bankable climate adaptation investments, and help authorities to mobilize climate-related financing.
This assistance will help fill knowledge gaps on how climate change is affecting agro-ecological zoning, irrigation, and livestock which will help farmers plan better. This component will also assess and build technical capacity in the Ministry of Agriculture, Mechanization and Irrigation Development (MAMID) for irrigation planning and modeling.
The growing frequency and severity of droughts is increasing food insecurity and accelerating the demand for irrigation at a faster rate than farmers or the government can finance. To counter this, the assistance will also study the new water requirements and advise on appropriate irrigation technologies that are water-efficient and small scale. This will help to introduce innovative landscape management techniques into the forestry sector, and work on mitigating the impact of climate change in the water-energy nexus. The program will also help Zimbabwe to implement its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the climate agenda and to mobilize more climate financing.
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