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Farirai Machivenyika

Senior Reporter

Zimbabwe has set a target to achieve a green economy by 2030 while climate change issues have been mainstreamed in all sectors of the economy.

This was said by President Mnangagwa while addressing a leaders dialogue held virtually on the impact of Covid-19 on climate change mitigation  report.

The dialogue was organised by the African Development Bank and the Global Centre for Adaptation and was attended by several heads of States and Governments from the continent and other participants from UN agencies and multilateral institutions.

President Mnangagwa said climate change was irreversible and called for measures to mitigate and adapt to the ever changing environment.

“In the case of Zimbabwe, an ambitious target has been set to green the economy by 2030 whilst climate change, adaptation and resilience have been mainstreamed in all sectors.

“In addition, the country has a long-term low emission development strategy which provides a range of options to contribute in the climate change goal of limiting the global temperature increase,” President Mnangagwa said.

He added that investments in climate proof agriculture, water harvesting infrastructure and renewable energy were now a priority for most nations on the continent.

“The current scenarios thus call for national adaptation programmes to be complemented by the mobilisation of additional resources to enable countries to recover from Covid-19 related economic growth slippages.

“It is also imperative that we adapt, innovate and find consensus at regional, continental and global level to deal with the current stock of atmospheric carbon,” he said.

In his remarks, AfDB president Dr Akinwumi Adesina said there was need to strengthen resource mobilisation to finance climate adaptation programmes on the continent.

He said Africa was bearing the brunt of climate change although its contribution to global warming was low and called on developed countries to contribute more towards climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.

International Monetary Fund managing director Ms Kristalina Georgieva said the Special Drawing Rights that the institution is expected to release soon would assist African countries’ efforts to resuscitate their economies ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic.

SDRs are an international reserve asset created by the IMF to supplement member countries’ official reserves.

They are held by central banks and can be exchanged for hard currency with another central bank or used to determine a country’s creditworthiness.

The IMF is expected to release US$650 billion worth of SDRs to boost countries’ reserves following the global economic downturn induced by the pandemic.