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It was water that stripped nearly everything from Tambudzai Chikweya’s life on the night of March 15, 2019.

As Cyclone Idai tore through Chimanimani, her hometown in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands, it unleashed floods that swept away her house and claimed the life of her eldest daughter. Chikweya was rescued only after spending the night pinned between a wardrobe and a bed, unable to free herself from the mud.

More than five years later, water again stands in the way of Chikweya’s attempts to build a new life for herself and her family. But this time, the problem is that there isn’t enough of it.

The mother-of-three has been resettled in Runyararo, a vast expanse of sun-baked semi-arid land where the Zimbabwe government has been building brick homes for hundreds of people displaced by the cyclone, on the site of a former colonial farm more than 60 kilometres away from Chimanimani.

High temperatures of up to 34 degrees Celsius and erratic rainfall make access to water in Runyararo “inadequate”, according to government documents. The situation has been made worse this year by a severe drought – dubbed “historic” by the UN – which has affected much of Southern Africa and was sparked by the El Niño weather pattern.

“Not having enough water and drought-induced hunger are challenges here,” Chikweya said, speaking through a translator when Climate Home visited her home in Runyararo last September on a trip organised by Danish humanitarian NGO DanChurchAid.

“It was a very difficult decision for us [to move here],” she added, “It weighed on us for a long time.”

Tambudzai Chikweya walks past some of the land she was allocated by the government as part of the resettlement project. Photo: Matteo Civillini

The reality has also proved tough. Standing in front of a small vegetable patch where she grows tomatoes and kale, Chikweya described the struggle she faces in getting enough food to feed herself and her children at least once a day.

She tried to grow potatoes on a large plot of land donated by the government – but the crops failed in the bone-dry soil as a result of the stifling heat and a shortage of water.

Climate Home asked Zimbabwe’s government why storm-hit communities were resettled in a known drought-prone area, but had not received a response by the time of the publication.

Multiple climate threats

Chikweya’s situation underscores the wide range of climate-related threats affecting vulnerable communities in a country like Zimbabwe where the frequency and intensity of both storms and droughts are projected to increase as the planet heats up.

The situation in Runyararo also highlights the complexities of the critical decisions facing cash-strapped governments that need to ensure their efforts to help people recover from one disaster also make them better able to withstand future hazards.

Mattias Söderberg, global climate lead at DanChurchAid, said adapting to multiple climate stresses “is not just a tick-box exercise”, but must be grounded in a “thorough assessment of the expected climate effects”.

Development organisations and government authorities leading adaptation projects need enough expertise to take into account expected climate impacts in the future as well as what is happening now. “Otherwise adaptation investment may be lost, and people will live in a false sense of safety,” Söderberg said.

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Doing that in practice, however, can add to the upfront costs of adaptation measures. To tackle the lack of water in Runyararo, for example, the national government has sketched out plans to build a dam on a nearby river and bring a stable water supply into the area. But a lack of funding has put the dam project beyond reach for now.

It is a familiar dilemma for developing nations struggling to bridge the widening gulf between the impacts of climate change and the shortfall of money available to address them.

International public funding to protect communities in poorer, vulnerable countries from worsening extreme weather and rising seas is only a fraction – between 7% and 13% – of what is needed, according to the latest Adaptation Gap Report published on Thursday by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

UNEP said governments have an important opportunity to “alter this trajectory” at the upcoming COP29 summit, starting next week in Baku, Azerbaijan. The talks are expected to agree on a new post-2025 global climate finance goal to help developing countries tackle climate change – but deep divisions remain on what it should consist of, how large it should be, and who should contribute to it.

For Zimbabwe, the money could make all the difference when dealing with another climate disaster.

‘Surrounded by floodwater’

Back in 2019, Joseph Maphosa was fast asleep when the water brought by Cyclone Idai burst through the front door of his home late at night with such force that it lifted up his bed.

Idai was then passing through Kopa, a settlement lying on a plain at the confluence of three rivers. Conditions making it particularly prone to flooding and landslides would turn Kopa into the epicentre of the disaster.

After fleeing his house by hanging onto the roof trusses, Maphosa eventually climbed up into a tree with three of his neighbours. They spent the next 48 hours there alone.

“The rain was coming down all around us, there was nothing we could do,” he recounted more than five years later. “No one could help us because we were just surrounded by floodwater.”

By the time rescuers arrived and took the four people to safety, the water had started receding and the devastation caused by the cyclone was laid bare.

It was Zimbabwe’s most devastating natural disaster on record.

Travail Ngorima looks at the remnants of his family home in Kopa that was destroyed by Cyclone Idai. (Photo: Matteo Civillini)

More than 70 households were swept away in Kopa alone. Across the country, 344 people died, with over 250 reported missing and 60,000 displaced by the disaster. The cost of damage to property and infrastructure ranged between $542 million and $616 million according to a rapid impact assessment by the World Bank which funded a wide-ranging recovery programme.

As the government and development agencies set about rebuilding homes, roads and bridges and restoring local people’s livelihoods, they promised that similar cyclones would never have the same calamitous consequences.

‘Building back better’

“We said, ‘we don’t need to build back better anymore – we want to build back better first time’,” John Misi, acting director for local government services in Manicaland Province, told reporters visiting the area in September.

“We challenged our local authorities that no one was going to build a structure, a home, a shelter, without getting technical support from the council so that we build more resilient infrastructure,” he added.

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On a three-day trip across the province, Climate Home saw a mixed picture of how the recovery efforts have unfolded five years on from the dramatic events caused by Idai.

Key infrastructure – including many roads and bridges – was repaired, restoring access to remote communities.

Still, a large swathe of the floodplain in Kopa remains littered with giant boulders that came rolling down from the mountains as a result of the cyclone, destroying everything in their way.

Even so, a dozen metres away, the local business centre is a hive of activity. New buildings are being erected, helping locals to earn a living but also fuelling concerns over what would happen if a fresh climate disaster struck.

New commercial buildings are springing up in Kopa, a flood-prone area. (Photo: Matteo Civillini)

“There is no order – these businesses are just coming up,” said Maphosa, who now works in Chimanimani’s civil registry office. “It is a great risk to build there. [With Cyclone Idai] water got into the shops there but people are still building them there anyways.”

While commercial buildings are being constructed in Kopa, an official told Climate Home that the local council denied permission to rebuild residential houses there.

Most people made homeless by the disaster found shelter with families or host communities, but hundreds of households ended up in temporary camps waiting to be given a new permanent home elsewhere.

Settling in the ‘land of peace’

The centrepiece of the Zimbabwe government’s resettlement plans lies in Runyararo, which means “land of peace” in the local Shona language. The settlement lies at the end of a long dirt road nearly two-hours’ drive away from Chimanimani.

Here, on a largely empty piece of barren land traditionally used for cattle-grazing, the government built 159 new homes for displaced people – with close to a hundred more in the pipeline – as well as a primary school and a small hospital.

In addition to a four-room house, new residents are allocated 2.5 hectares of land that they can use to grow crops or keep animals.

Hundreds of households displaced by Cyclone Idai have been resettled in Runyararo, more than 60 km away from their previous hometown. (Photo: Matteo Civillini)

Chikweya moved to Runyararo in 2022 after spending three years in a tent camp. She said she was grateful to the government for her new house, but she has been struggling to adjust to a life full of fresh challenges.

“It is more isolated here,” she said. “In Chimanimani, I used to sell things and there was always someone who would buy from you, which helped me get by.”

Chikweya now keeps goats and chickens and tends her vegetable patch – but her ambition to put the rest of her land to productive use to grow food has failed because she cannot irrigate it regularly.

The shortage of water afflicts everyone in the area – and it’s becoming more acute as the government has resettled cyclone survivors there.

“It’s always been like this here,” lamented another resident during a community meeting. “But because there are a lot of people now, the little water that was here is now being used by too many people. It’s getting to a point where the water just dries up.”

Struggle to boost water access

Boreholes to tap underground water were drilled in the area, but a lack of rain during the ongoing drought means the water table has been getting lower and some of the boreholes have dried up, a local official said.

German charity Welthungerhilfe (WHH) stepped in to help, with funding from the US government’s development agency USAID. It drilled two more boreholes and installed solar panels to pump water into a large storage tank and from there to a network of taps situated closer to the homes.

Yet, while the scheme has offered a welcome reprieve for the community, water stress persists – and the struggle for a sufficient supply could get worse as the number of residents grows.

Matthias Späth, WHH’s country director in Zimbabwe, told Climate Home it was “saddening to see how quickly the water level is shrinking” when he visited Runyararo recently.

“We did the best we could with the available resources,” he said. “We ensured that no IDP [internally displaced person’s] household was more than 100 metres from a water point.”

From cyclone to drought, Zimbabwe's climate victims struggle to adapt

Tambudzai Chikweya stands by one of the water points installed by WHH. Photo: Matteo Civillini

Späth added that, given water shortages across the wider area, the system designed for the new residents “has likely been overloaded” because people living there before the resettlement project have also been using it. “A larger budget would have enabled us to extend the water system to the host community,” he said.

A lack of funding is also putting the brakes on a project the government believes could offer a long-term solution. Under the plans, a dam would be built on a river up in the nearby hills and a 30-km pipeline would channel the water from there to the community in Runyararo.

But, for now, there is no money to put the costly project into practice, local officials told Climate Home.

Späth said he was concerned that current global geopolitics and national economic hardship would make it hard to mobilise the funds needed to build a dam. He also said water quality in the river would need to be assessed to ensure it is suitable for filling the dam, partly because livestock also use it for their needs.

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Misi of Manicaland province said the administration has been doing its best in Runyararo but acknowledged that “it is a work-in-progress” and challenges remain.

“We want to make that settlement as good as the area that they [the displaced people] stayed in before the cyclone,” he said.

For Chikweya, that day cannot come soon enough as she reflects on her life before Cyclone Idai.

“Chimanimani was basically an oasis. We’d never run out of water – we could always access fresh food,” she said. “Here it’s more difficult.”

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Megan Rowling)

Danish NGO DanChurchAid organised and sponsored Climate Home’s trip to Zimbabwe. 

The post From cyclone to drought, Zimbabwe’s climate victims struggle to adapt appeared first on Climate Home News.

From cyclone to drought, Zimbabwe’s climate victims struggle to adapt

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When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño

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Amira Odeh Quiñones is a hydrologist and Caribbean organiser for the 350.org climate campaign group

El Niño, likely to be one of the strongest in modern history, has arrived on Caribbean shores.

Drought is slowly creeping up on our islands. But unlike the fiery wildfires ravaging parts of Europe, there’s no smoke signalling the damage being done, no sirens to warn of the danger. Only announcements from public health officials to stay indoors and remain hydrated — as if outdoor workers and farming communities have the luxury to heed such advice.

During El Niño, strong atmospheric winds alter rain patterns and trap heat across the Caribbean. But while we have experienced El Niño many times before, it has become very visible in recent years how climate change is making this natural phenomenon worse.

Across the Greater Antilles, temperatures are soaring past 38°C (100°F), with real-feel indexes reaching a gruelling 43°C in parts of Puerto Rico where I live. Cuba has it worse. Widespread power outages mean that methods for cooling down are unavailable for most of the day, leaving millions of vulnerable people at risk of heat stroke when temperatures hit 38°C.

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During the last strong drought a decade ago, I had water only two days a week in my home. Today, there are many families whose taps are about to run completely dry. Water authorities have already begun strict rationing in some municipalities, with more on the list scheduled for rationing if conditions don’t change.

Water rationing is far more than an inconvenience; it is an immediate health risk. This means thousands of people need to constantly haul heavy buckets up flights of stairs just so they could bathe, cook, stay hydrated – the basics of survival.

Heat causes health problems

Puerto Rico is home to roughly 300,000 elderly residents. Many live alone, isolated and without support. They risk severe physical injury when carrying heavy water containers, and are wont to suffer from silent heat exhaustion in unventilated rooms.

Furthermore, when water shortages force residents to store water in open household containers, it inadvertently creates breeding grounds for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Paired with scorching temperatures that tend to shorten the mosquito breeding cycle, the region is facing explosive outbreaks of dengue fever that endanger our most vulnerable: children and the elderly.

The economic fallout is equally devastating. Dry fields mean millions of dollars in lost crops, forcing small agricultural businesses to collapse, needing urgent government relief to survive. Extreme fuel shortages have already paralyzed Cuba’s agricultural sector, cutting food output by 60% – the El Niño dry spell threatens to decimate it.

At sea, warmer ocean waters fuel massive influxes of sargassum seaweed. Rotting sargassum chokes our beaches, destroying the local tourism industry that so many working families rely on. Tangled seaweed also damages nets and boat engines, slashing fish catches and driving up equipment costs for local fishers.

In the south of Puerto Rico, the coastal town of La Parguera is currently witnessing a historic amount of sargassum on its shores. This has halted most of the boating activity in the area, which is the seaside town’s main tourist draw and economic driver.

All over the Caribbean, from town halls to local group gatherings, the story I hear is always the same: constant headaches, lost work hours, failing health, and a sense that quality of life is silently being stolen. The compounding effects of heatwaves, drought, and marine destruction are exhausting our people, our islands.

Climate change to blame

Climate change makes each El Niño year hotter and more damaging. Higher baseline global temperatures increase the energy and moisture available for extreme weather. Latest projections show that El Niño may push the monthly global average temperature past 2°C of warming for the first time in early 2027. In the Caribbean islands, that will not just be breaking records – it’ll be breaking lives.

Recently, I had the opportunity to share a panel with climate scientists behind what is known as the field of “attribution science” – or the science that compares today’s climate conditions to what the Earth’s climate would be like without human activity, particularly burning fossil fuels. They’re unequivocal: it’s no longer a question of whether extreme weather is caused by climate change, it’s just a question of how much.

    Attribution science recently got a boost from the U.S.’ top scientific advisory body. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recognized that researchers’ methods have advanced considerably in recent years, resulting in better assessments on how much extreme weather can be attributed to human-caused climate change. It noted that attribution findings could be relevant in some types of legal cases, including those seeking damages from oil companies for climate impacts.

    This crisis, which is already taking a heavy toll on our communities’ survival, needs real, urgent, and structural action that goes beyond aid. With similar droughts now gripping parts of Asia and Africa, we’re falling into the familiar narrative of treating the looming humanitarian crisis as if no one was to blame, as if it is being caused solely by a natural phenomenon we can’t control.

    It’s not. The world was already on fire before its regular visitor, El Niño, came. While we need humanitarian action, we need climate action too, in order to permanently put out the flames.

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    Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change?

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    China has released a five-year plan dedicated to addressing climate change.

    The 15th five-year plan for a national response to climate change is the latest in a series to outline in-depth climate and energy targets for the 2026-2030 period.

    These include five-year plans for “building a Beautiful China”, developing a “new-type energy system” and developing renewable energy.

    There are also separate “action plans” for the 2026-2030 period, such as for peaking carbon emissions

    China has pledged to peak its emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.

    The new plan does not include any major new targets, instead consolidating and reaffirming existing policies.

    Nevertheless, it includes significant signals on key policy areas, such as non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, global climate governance and carbon markets.

    Below, Carbon Brief examines some of the notable elements in the latest five-year plan and what it reveals about China’s policy direction through to 2030.

    What does the climate plan cover?

    The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) released the plan in late July, in unison with 18 other government departments. These include the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, and the National Energy Administration.

    The document covers a range of topics, including CO2 emissions, other greenhouse gases (non-CO2 GHGs), carbon markets, carbon footprints, climate adaptation and international cooperation on climate change.

    For the first time at the five-year plan level, the plan creates a comprehensive target system covering all areas of climate policy, say officials in a MEE Q&A.

    They describe it as “the main policy instrument” for advancing China’s climate action during 2026-2030.

    China rarely issues high-level multi-year policies dedicated to “responding to climate change”. In 2014, the NDRC published a plan on the topic running through to 2020, but this was not linked to a five-year plan period.

    Qin Yan, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, tells Carbon Brief that the plan shows that China’s climate governance has reached “an unprecedented strategic level”.

    She adds that the plan creates an “all-encompassing target system” to support China’s Paris Agreement climate pledges for 2030 and 2035.

    In its 2030 pledge, China aimed to peak emissions “before 2030” and reduce carbon intensity – its emissions per unit of GDP – by more than 65% from 2005 levels.

    Last year, president Xi Jinping personally announced China’s 2035 pledge to cut China’s greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035, while “striving to do better”.

    The five-year plan marks a new phase in China’s climate policy, according to researchers at CIB Research, an economic research body affiliated with the Industrial Bank, whose largest shareholder is the Fujian provincial government.

    Their analysis adds that the plan represents a broad effort to strengthen China’s climate-governance system, implementation mechanisms and underlying capacity.

    Nevertheless, several headline targets and policies in the document simply reiterate already established plans.

    These include:

    • Cutting carbon intensity by 17% across the five years
    • Reducing carbon intensity per product in industries under China’s carbon market by 3%
    • Substituting fossil fuels with renewables
    • Strengthening climate adaptation
    • Supporting the “free flow” of cleantech

    What does the plan say about non-CO2 GHGs?

    The plan also goes into detail on China’s approach to non-CO2 GHGs. This includes reaffirming a target of an emissions “reduction capacity” from these gases totalling 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) by 2030, although the baseline is unclear.

    The target previously appeared in the overarching five-year plan, as well as the plan for building a “Beautiful China”.

    The goal refers to emissions reductions, which can be realised through implementing current non-CO2 emissions reduction policies and projects, says Chen Meian, programme director and senior analyst at the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP). 

    She adds that it is “relatively achievable”, with sources including increasing the number of coal-mine methane utilisation projects.

    She points to an MEE explanatory note for a draft methodology under the China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) scheme, China’s voluntary carbon-credit market. Chen says the note suggests that projects using ventilation air methane and coal-mine methane with concentrations below 8% alone could deliver around 20MtCO2e of reduction by 2030.

    The note states that, currently, such projects are estimated to be able to “generate annual emission reductions of approximately 4.5MtCO2e”.

    In addition, Chen says, measures targeting industrial nitrous oxide (N2O) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) could help make up the remainder needed to meet the target.

    According to iGDP analysis of biennial reports submitted by China to the UNFCCC, China emitted around 14,000MtCO2e of GHGs in 2021, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).

    Non-CO2 GHGs accounted for around 2,700MtCO2e, or 19%, of the total, the majority of which was methane, as shown in the figure below.

    Methane is China’s main source of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions by gas, MtCO2e. Stacked bar chart from 2005 to 2021 showing total emissions rising to over 2,700 MtCO2e. Methane consistently accounts for the largest share, followed by Nitrous Oxide and F-gases. Source: iGDP analysis of China’s first Biennial Transparency Report and fourth Biennial Update Report - (alt text generated by Google Gemini)
    iGDP analysis of China’s first Biennial Transparency Report and fourth Biennial Update Report.

    China’s plans to curb these super-pollutants in the five-year period include coal-mine methane utilisation projects, end-of-pipe destruction technologies for HFCs and guidance on the use of catalysts to reduce N2O emissions.

    The plan also calls for the recovery and replacement of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) in power equipment.

    For Chen, the plan’s focus on SF6 control is particularly noteworthy. She says the gas is “finally receiving policy attention” and that proactive action is “timely and will help avoid future emissions growth” as China’s power system expands.

    What does the plan say about global climate governance?

    One of the plan’s clearest objectives for international cooperation is for China to play a more active role in global climate governance.

    By 2030, it says China should markedly increase its “influence, guiding power, shaping power and moral appeal” in this area.

    It says China’s climate action could also feed into the Global Governance Initiative, a policy initiative aimed at reforming the global governance system.

    China will also aim to “build a new narrative on climate governance”, it adds.

    Prof Thomas Hale, a professor in public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, writes on LinkedIn that the plan “marks a major rhetorical shift” towards China being increasingly willing to “lead and shape” global climate action.

    Another clear focal point for international cooperation is in carbon markets.

    The plan calls for China to expand the global influence of its carbon market, such as through international rule-setting, cooperation on standards and by hosting the China Carbon Market Conference.

    Qin says China’s more active role in global carbon pricing is already evident in the launch of the open coalition on compliance carbon markets with the EU and Brazil. This coalition is expected to adopt a work plan at the China Carbon Market Conference in September.

    Qin also notes that China “could become the world’s largest [carbon] offset buyer” as its energy transition progresses.

    The country would, therefore, “benefit from helping shape global rules under the Article 6 framework [for carbon trading under the Paris Agreement]”, she adds.

    The post Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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    Quarter of countries still missing UN climate plans 18 months after deadline

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    About a quarter of the countries signed up to the Paris Agreement are still breaching its rules by failing to submit a new national climate plan, 18 months after the February 2025 deadline.

    Forty-five nations had not submitted a plan known as a nationally determined contribution (NDC), according to the Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee’s (PAICC) newly-published report of its 7-10 July 2026 meeting. One, Oman, has published it since the meeting.

    Twelve countries ignored the committee’s repeated attempts to find out why they had not yet produced a climate plan, the report said. They will be invited to the committee’s next meeting, from September 1-4, so it can identify the challenges and constraints they face.

    Members of the committee are divided, as they were at their last meeting, on whether to name those countries publicly and will debate the question again in September.

    The PAICC does not have any power to punish governments, as building these powers into the Paris Agreement was thought to be so controversial that it could have stopped some governments from joining, experts have previously told Climate Home News.

    A key requirement of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement is that governments publish a more ambitious NDC every five years, setting targets to reduce their planet-heating emissions and outlining their policies to adapt to climate change, in order to meet the accord’s goals on limiting global warming and protecting people from its effects.

    The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in 2025.

    Some medium-sized emitters

    Countries without an updated NDC include Egypt, Vietnam, Argentina and the Phillippines, all of which rank among the world’s 40 largest greenhouse gas emitters. The rest of the countries are smaller, poorer nations, with many in Africa or the Caribbean.

    Some nations have argued that they cannot put together an NDC – which requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy – because of exceptional circumstances. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC committee, seen by Climate Home News, says that the country’s civil war has led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.

      The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement, although the US submitted a 2035 NDC under the Biden administration before Donald Trump pulled the US out of the UN climate accords.

      The committee also expressed concern that the UN’s NDC registry continued to label the climate plans of countries that are no longer party to the Paris Agreement as “active”, according to its report. The US submission has since been archived.

      Since the last PAICC meeting in March, ten countries have published NDCs. The committee did not name them but they include India, Algeria, Cameroon and Guyana.

      The post Quarter of countries still missing UN climate plans 18 months after deadline appeared first on Climate Home News.

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