Limits to climate change adaptation in Zimbabwe: Insights, experiences and lessons

Abstract

The need to climate proof Zimbabwe’s socio-economic development sectors is now a central theme in the country’s climate policy discourse. This stems from the realisation that most of the country’s areas and sectors are already showing signs of vulnerability to the change and variability in the climate system. Accordingly, climate change adaptation is no longer an option but an urgent requirement. However, scholarly attention to the topic has largely remained fragmented in synchrony with the segmented sectoral policy interventions in various adaptation efforts. Research that analyses the major factors underpinning successful adaptation is highly timely given that most of the empirical evidence point towards gaps in adaptive capacities across the country’s climate sensitive sectors. Driven by the acknowledgement that Zimbabwe’s adaptation efforts are chiefly stymied by its predisposition to non-climatic drivers of vulnerability, this paper shows that the country is already showing numerous signs of limits to adaptation. It draws the evidence from various insights and experiences in the agriculture, water, human settlements and health, energy and industry, and biodiversity sectors. Specifically, this report serves to document existing evidence of challenges in successful adaptation in order to guide adaptation policy and practice. In addition, it is intended that this illumination would provide Zimbabwe and other countries, in similar adaptation failure milieu, to formulate strategies meant to build resilience in areas and sectors already showing signs of maladaptation.