By Tendai Guvamombe
The Global Summit on Climate Change is just around the corner and member states under submission to the Paris Agreement on Climate are without any exception expected to reveal status’, checks and balances with regards to their commitment on the reduction of carbon emissions.
This coming September is the month and New York City in USA will be the official venue for the Global Summit on Climate Change which will concurrently run alongside the United Nations General Assembly.
Among the topical issues expected to take lead at the high profile Summit is to do with how countries have shown resilience on climate change adaptation and mitigation measures.
According to Lawrence Mashungu from Climate Change Management Department in the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water and Climate, the Summit is set to be attended by Heads of States upon the call from the UN Secretary General, ideally create a platform for them to table their pledges and nationally determined contributions with regards to low emissions strategies.
“The Summit will start with earnest implementation of the Paris Agreement in 2020. The UN Secretary-General saw it fit to bring together all the Presidents of the earth so that when they come to the Climate Summit they bring in actual pledges they are putting forward for climate change to achieve their Nationally Determined Contributions and Globally to achieve the Low Emission Development Pathway for the world.”
Zimbabwe is among the countries that will inevitably throw in pledges of its Nationally Determined Contributions(NDCs) in tandem with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. It will showcase innovative guides which spearhead the green economy as well as specifications on how various institutions are embracing the main thrust of reducing carbon emissions.
Apart from this, the involvement of private sector participation to the subject matter is relevant in the quest to spearhead sustainable development.
“Currently Zimbabwe has done well in terms of preparing for the implementation of the Paris Agreement and this is going to showcase our Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) Implementation Framework with the the impeded measurement reporting and verification.”
“This will also pave way to showcase a world heritage which is economy wise, which is also well costed and very specific in terms of what each and every sector is going to do in terms of reducing emissions.”
A constant rise of carbon emissions among other greenhouse gases have been triggering atmospheric temperatures to rise beyond level of normalcy and a rapid change in weather patterns has been inevitable.
This has actually posed two-fold challenges to places of the globe.
On record, the waters of the Australian Great Barrier Reef is reported to have warmed by 0,36 degrees with different oceans experiencing temperature rise thereby compromising the aquatic life. Lately, coastal floods annually haunts India’s Mumbai while the Alps Mountains are slowly suffering the temperature rise effects and Chinese Gansu Province has completely turned into an arid desert.
Zimbabwe is still grappling with the effects of the disastrous Cyclone Idai which claimed many lives and the rains disastrously affected Mozambique and Malawi.
Given such a predicament countries across the world should reach a consensus on low carbon emissions outside the bracket of different political ideologies. The Global target to completely reduce emissions will be certain by 2050.