**1. Introduction**

The phenomenon of climate change has been nothing short of spectacular. Recent scholarship confirms earlier evidence that change and variability in the climate system, primarily triggered by anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, will have far reaching global consequences [1–5]. The events associated with climatic phenomena, largely noticeably as extreme temperatures, storms, droughts and floods, are said to be more frequent and severe in developing countries [1, 3]. The reasons for such a regional risk divide in exposure to climate change are beyond climatic. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) captures them as non-climatic drivers of vulnerability, which summarily include poor governance, conflicts and instabilities, inequalities, hunger, poverty and disease [2, 6, 7]. Zimbabwe is not an exception to the climatic disturbances. The major climatic issues are evidenced by declining water resources, fall in agricultural productivity, biodiversity decline, geographical spread of vector-borne diseases and pestiferous nature of problem pests, and volatile weather and climatic disasters [8–10].

In its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), the IPCC identifies challenges and opportunities in both mitigation and adaptation responses [6]. Generically understood as a proactive measure to prevent or minimise harm, mitigation in climate science and practice carries a dual meaning. From the distinction given by the IPCC as mitigation of disaster risk and disaster and mitigation of climate change through reducing GHG emissions and enhancing carbon sinks, both definitional strands are beneficial to societies practising climatic interventions, albeit with some challenges. Drawing from the conceptual scheme adopted by Wilbanks and Sathaye [11], which classifies mitigation as structural (technological) and unstructural (economic structure, societal organisation and individual behaviour), a number of opportunities could be unlocked, particularly in addressing the negative effects of climate change. On the other hand, the definitional scope of adaptation extends from the mitigation of disaster risk and disaster strand, primarily focusing on actions taken to respond to climatic events. As such, it is critical to evaluate what climatic responses can do to communities intended to benefit from those policy or strategy systems. The purpose of climate mitigation, therefore, is to stabilise the climatic system and lessen pressure on adaptation. Several scholars (for example, see [11, 12]) have pointed out the complementary roles of mitigation and adaptation, arguing that adaptation is difficult or even a futile if mitigation fails to minimise the magnitude of the costs to be handled. This argument tends to shape current climate policy regimes, the recent one being the Paris Agreement, which aims to "Strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty…" [13].

The dividends of such a global policy framework, where they exist, remain largely obscured by the attention to the magnitude of observed and anticipated climatic threats and, therefore, become poorly understood. Africa is one of the regions seriously affected by climate change. The reasons for this are reported by Boko et al. [14] and later reinforced by Niang et al. [15] as relating to other factors as unequal access to resources, enhanced food insecurity and poor health management systems, which exacerbate the vulnerabilities of many communities in the region. Despite low levels of adaptive capacity reported by Klein et al. [16], adaptation success stories associated with higher adaptive capacities have been noticed in some countries mainly in North Africa [17]. Overall, within the continent, individual, household or micro level adaptive capacities are shaped by functional institutions, access to assets and collective action [15, 18]. These opportunities enhance the ability of people to make informed decisions in exploiting the beneficial aspects of responding to climate change.

Realising the effects that climate change poses to its broad socio-economic development sectors, Zimbabwe has not been complacent in responding to climate change, albeit experiencing challenges. Current evidence of climate change in Zimbabwe portrays a predominantly challenging situation. Existing knowledge on the sectoral impacts of climate change in the agriculture, water, energy, industry and health sector point to a negative state (for example, see [8, 9, 19]). This article challenges this confinement by broadening the focus to examine opportunities associated with the phenomena of climate change. In this article, the effects of climate change are deciphered. To do this, the article adopts a sector-based analysis to show how the various socio-economic development sectors are experiencing climate change. The policy and institutional field is also evaluated to understand the supporting system for climate change responses. This background forms the basis for understanding the climatic interventions that have been made or planned for each sector identified. Within this exposition, it is shown that both challenges and opportunities exist. Given the limited scholarship treatment on the latter, the article draws from empirical evidence which shows that several opportunities have been

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*Deciphering the Climate Change Conundrum in Zimbabwe: An Exposition*

benefits is given considerable examination throughout the article.

unlocked and/or remain open for beneficial exploitation by individuals, communities and institutions as they take advantage of the climate change response agenda. The article underscores the need to take continuous stock of achievements made in the country's development sectors as mitigation and adaptation interventions gather momentum. The sustainability question of these observed and anticipated

The article largely adopts an empirical methodological approach, which is inarguably more appropriate to exposit the climatic experiences in Zimbabwe. This has been complemented by case study reviews to deepen the empirical analysis on local evidence of climatic interventions and to draw from experiences of similar climate change-induced responses from other countries mainly drawn from Africa. Within this approach, the study utilised a combination of sector-based and policy and institutional analytic frameworks to evaluate existing climatic practices that the country has embraced since 1992, when the country started to participate in global climate change regimes. Essentially, climate change responses in Zimbabwe can be traced since 1992, the period that recorded a major milestone in embracing climatic responses following the signing and ratification of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Given the evident influence of non-climatic factors of vulnerability that are reported by the IPCC [1], the analysis is broadened to incorporate the development policies that govern the broad socio-economic sectors in Zimbabwe. Thus, the empirical evidence presented in this discussion is largely drawn from existing official government reports, including other documents such as national budget statements. The utilisation of official documents might have marginalised some climatic activities and statistics outside the mainstream government records, particularly those not captured by the Climate Change Management Department (CCMD). However, given the coordinating role of climate change responses by the CCMD, the study was able to capture the official facts and statistics about climatic phenomena and response interventions in Zimbabwe. Where some figures required to be updated, particularly on funds that were received to implement climate change projects, officials from the CCMD were

The reports and documents reviewed were also mainly sector-specific, although at the level of analysis, some overlaps exist among the agriculture, water, energy and health sectors that are discussed. Sectoral analysis was used both to deepen the analysis of climatic impacts in each sector and to examine the adequacy of the current climatic practices. The policy and institutional review also informed the state of the support systems in place to tackle the climate change challenge. It was necessary to assess if the available institutions are adequately capacitated to drive the climate change response agenda, particularly in a context where the sustainability of climatic interventions is increasingly getting some attention in global policy

The evidence of climate change in Zimbabwe can best be presented by adopting a sector-based analysis, as noted earlier. This section presents observed and anticipated impacts of climate change in the agriculture, water, energy and health sectors,

which are the most representative and highly vulnerable to climate change.

regimes of climate change and disaster risk management [13, 20].

**3. Sectoral impacts of climate change in Zimbabwe**

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.84443*

**2. Research methodology**

engaged to verify the recorded statistics.

unlocked and/or remain open for beneficial exploitation by individuals, communities and institutions as they take advantage of the climate change response agenda. The article underscores the need to take continuous stock of achievements made in the country's development sectors as mitigation and adaptation interventions gather momentum. The sustainability question of these observed and anticipated benefits is given considerable examination throughout the article.
