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President Mugabe and First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe chat with Vice Presidents Emmerson Mnangagwa and Phelekezela Mphoko (right) on arrival at Harare International Airport yesterday. — (Picture by Innocent Makawa)

Caesar Zvayi recently at the UNITED NATIONS, New York—
PRESIDENT Mugabe returned home yesterday from the United Nations where he attended the inaugural High-Level Conference on the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14. The SDGs are a set of sustainable development targets adopted by the UN to succeed the Millennium Development Goals that lapsed in 2015, and SDG 14 deals with the conservation and sustainable use of oceans, seas and marine resources.

SDG14, thus, dovetails with Zimbabwe’s development thrust as Government seeks the judicious exploitation of natural resources in a sustainable manner in addition to getting a fair deal on marine traffic as a landlocked country that depends on others for access to ports.

The President, who was accompanied by First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe, Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi; Environment, Water and Climate Minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri and senior Government officials, was welcomed at Harare International Airport by Vice Presidents Emmerson Mnangagwa and Phelekezela Mphoko, Minister of State for Harare Provincial Affairs Miriam Chikukwa, Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister Chris Mushohwe, Defence Minister Sidney Sekeramayi, Service Chiefs and senior Government officials.

The Oceans Conference, which was co-chaired by Fiji and Sweden, ended on Friday with the adoption of a declaration dubbed “Our Oceans, Our Future — Call to Action” by 193 member states.

Member states agreed to implement robust, long-term strategies to reduce the use of plastics and micro-plastics such as plastic bags and single use plastics.

They also agreed to implement effective adaptation and mitigation measures to ocean and coastal acidification, sea level rises and increases in ocean temperatures.

Most significantly, the Call to Action upholds the importance of the Paris Agreement on climate change to the implementation of SDG14 despite opposition from the US and Egypt which resisted the inclusion of the phrase climate change in the Call to Action.

Speaking on arrival at Harare International Airport yesterday, Minister Muchinguri-Kashiri expressed satisfaction with the deliberations.

‘‘I am very happy that 1 300 organisations, states committed themselves to addressing the challenges that are bedevilling our oceans. The problems of pollution, and also over-fishing, the issues of governance, and also of carbon dioxide which is being emitted by all of us are a challenge. We were getting 50 percent of our oxygen from the oceans, but now that has been reduced because of the challenges of acidification. I am sure you heard about that problem also,” said Minister Muchinguri-Kashiri.

‘‘It’s very pleasing that people called for action, that we need to safeguard, conserve and preserve the oceans. We need also to set sound management systems to deal with the challenges of over-fishing, illegal fishing. You may also be aware that 80 percent of the plastics pollution come from land, not from the ocean countries themselves. So we have a responsibility as Zimbabwe to make sure that we address the issue of plastics that you see everywhere, the issue of litter, the issue of waste management,” she said.

“The seas are very critical to us because of the blue economy that they serve. We get our fish protein from the oceans, also tourism, also trade. For us it’s very critical that we keep the seas clean and away from acidification because we survive also from the oceans,’’ she said.