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As one of the countries already suffering from climate change caused by global warming, with more drought years and more destructive cyclones than historical records suggest was the norm, Zimbabwe has more incentives than its treaty obligations to fulfil targets set by the Paris Agreement five years ago.

In a virtual summit marking the fifth anniversary of that agreement, President Mnangagwa made it clear at the weekend that Zimbabwe was targeting a 40 percent drop in carbon emissions by 2050.

This target, it must be remembered, is a target set by a developing and industrialising country that needs to grow rapidly, increasing the size of its economy several fold by the same date.

So, it is not just figuring out how to cut present emissions by switching technologies and building up carbon sinks.

It is how we can, on just over half our present emissions, produce far more electricity, how to produce all the cement we need to build everyone a decent house and build the factories that must be constructed, how to run our industries, and how to build up our fleet of trucks and cars to the levels of a developed country.

Zimbabwe is a small country, and not highly-developed, so our present emissions as a percentage of the global total are just a tiny blip on the graph.

But the Paris Agreement was a global deal, carefully crafted to be fair to all, and commits everyone to slashing carbon emissions.

So, while the major gains come from the cuts of big industrialised countries, even the little countries have to add their share.

For Zimbabwe, the major challenge will be how to industrialise and grow within ever decreasing limits of carbon emissions.

The Paris Agreement did address this issue. The developing world was not condemned to perpetual poverty and the right of developing countries to move from low-income status to middle-income status to upper-income status was recognised as a fundamental right.

This requires the huge development needed across the Third World to be done differently from how the big industrial powers of today developed, and that group includes the latest giant of China.

We have to use different and better technologies, and often more expensive technologies, to accelerate our economic growth without wrecking our planet, while we do this.

One plank of the Paris Agreement was the Green Climate Fund, set up to help poorer countries to cut their present emissions and to afford the technologies they need to grow responsibly.

President Mnangagwa, while thanking the fund for the US$3 million Zimbabwe has already received, which has largely been used on required research and planning, quite rightly appealed for greatly increased contributions.

The National Development Strategy 1, covering development from next year to 2025, does, as the President stressed — commit Zimbabwe to green growth.

In the field of energy, and we do need to more than double our electricity output, the stress was on hydro-power, solar power and biogas.

Zimbabwe and Zambia are now committed to building the Batoka hydro scheme on the Zambezi River between the Victoria Falls gorges and Lake Kariba.

That provides a huge surge in generation capacity for the two developing nations, although optimism needs to be tempered by the growing fluctuations in regional rainfall.

We have already seen what successive severe regional droughts have done to the Kariba output, and similar fluctuations will have the same effect on Bakota.

Solar power is an obvious way forward for a tropical country, and the plans include US$250 million to be spent on off-grid power.

This is needed in any case as part of our major drive to boost irrigation and rural standards of living. In fact, solar power is ideally suited for irrigation, since water can be pumped when it is sunny and on cloudy rainy days, when generation drops, you need to pump less in any case.

The third big energy scheme is to harness Harare’s garbage, and there is a lot of garbage in what is easily our biggest city.

This at the moment rots on badly-maintained landfills, pumping methane, a serious greenhouse gas far more destructive than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere and helping to trigger bad fires that are not just a safety issue, but pump even more carbon into the air.

There is established technology that can generate electricity via biogas from a properly designed plant, giving three simultaneous benefits: more electricity, fewer emissions, and safe and inert remains that can be safely buried in landfills.

In some cases, development actually cuts carbon emissions.

Bringing rural communities out of poverty, for example, cuts back heavily on firewood and charcoal consumption, to levels where reforestation outstrips wood consumption, giving us a net gain in our biggest carbon sink.

New technologies under development and implementation should allow Zimbabwe to grow fast without more carbon.

One example is electric vehicles.

These are a small, but fast growing faction of the global vehicle fleet and ambitious plans in major vehicle-producing countries see a total replacement of the world’s vehicle fleet well before 2050.

Zimbabwe needs to be right up there, developing its vehicle industry for the new products.

Here we have another incentive; with our large lithium resources we can profit from the huge surge in battery demand.

Our industrialists will have to be thinking about energy efficiencies.

To some extent this will be automatic, with our retreat from subsidies and costing electricity at the correct figure, but again there might be issues of access to technologies, some of which can be homegrown, but some of which will need processes carefully patented by their developers.

Having a rational royalty system for those technologies will be needed, along with Green Climate Fund assistance to actually help pay for them in the first place.

President Mnangagwa’s address to the anniversary summit was sober and hit the right points: Zimbabwe acknowledges its obligations to cut emissions, Zimbabwe is already planning its rapid economic development along green routes, and this development will be a lot easier if the Green Climate Fund and other financial interventions are increased.

But all of this requires all Zimbabweans to be thinking green, and for our growing technology base to be at the forefront of developing our own technologies and processes, since we know we cannot rely purely on handouts and give-aways, and to carry on what we have started to do, ensure our ambitious plans for development at local and national level fit in with our commitment.