Harare — THE Environmental Management Agency (EMA) says it is implementing a five-year Global Environmental Facility (GEF) in conjunction with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to help local institutions cope with climatic change impacts in the agricultural sector.

EMA noted that climatic change was an additional constraint to sustainable socio-economic development in Zimbabwe. ". . . climate change will impede nations abilities to achieve sustainable development and the Millennium Development Goals . . . Africa will experience increased levels of water stress and reduced agricultural yields by up to 50 percent by 2020," it said.

It is against this background that EMA together with UNDP are implementing a five-year GEF medium-size project dubbed "Coping with Drought and Climate Change" within the agricultural sector, focusing on Chiredzi as a pilot site. EMA said the project is specially designed to help the Zimbabwean agricultural sector in a variety of ways. It is designed to increase capacity of local institutions to develop a knowledge base that will support adaptation to climate change and pilot a range of policy oriented adaptation measures for agriculture-based livelihood systems. EMA said the project will also promote the use of climate early warning systems to strengthen adaptation measures and upscale successful practices through policy changes.

In the last 50 years climate change has played a role in hampering sustainable socio-economic development. It has increased the frequency and severity of droughts and floods and caused periodic shifts in the onset of rains and has increased intensity of mid-season dry spells. EMA said at the current stage, the project was seeking to engage experienced consultants to assist in undertaking a project baseline study and developing downscaled climate change scenarios for Save and Runde river basins. They were also looking at assessing the sensitivity if Save and Runde surface water supplies to climate change impacts as well as assessing climate risk and vulnerability in Chiredzi district and developing a tailored seasonal climate forecast system for farmers in the area. A collective effort is needed in this project if Zimbabweans are to improve their socio-economic development by improving food security in the country, EMA said.