Climate There is variation in climate change impacts across the country. Temperatures are increasing throughout the country, with slightly higher warming trends in the south and west. The timing and amount of rainfall are becoming increasingly uncertain. Fewer days of rain, coupled with more frequent and longer dry spells, and higher intensity of daily rainfall during the rainy season, affect the agro-climatic conditions for crops and livestock, most severely in the south and west. Economy These changes impact Zimbabwe’s economy which is primarily agro-based, with over 70 per cent of the population living in rural areas and dependant on climate-sensitive livelihoods such as arable farming and livestock rearing. Price fluctuations, non-functional markets and fragmented value chains,  politically motivated decisions, and the need to feed a growing population worsen poverty and hinder food security, in particular for smallholder farmers.

Map of Zimbabwe Agro-Ecological Zones 2020 (Manatsa et al. 2020). View full map here (pdf).

Agricultural production systems

Zimbabwe produces a variety of crops in its 5 different agroecological zones which include maize as predominant staple crop, as well as sorghum, millet and legumes to a lesser extent, and few industrial crops. The country rears a variety of livestock that include cattle, goats, sheep, pigs and chickens.

Most rural Zimbabweans live in semi-arid zones. Research shows they will suffer from the emerging impacts of climate change and variability, including disasters such as droughts, periodic flooding, disease outbreaks for humans, crops and livestock and loss of crop lands. To cope with negative climatic impacts, farming communities have moved deeper into marginal lands, unsustainably extracting natural resources and using unsuitable agricultural practices. This leads to degrading of the natural resource base and a narrowing of options for communities to adapt to future climate.

How can national policies take the context and diversity of local implementation into account? In the AgMIP CLARE project, regional and national studies are integrated to determine effective policy interventions.

The country is investing in more climate resilient agricultural practices to better support the transformation of agricultural systems and food security in the future, guided by the policy instruments such as the National Development Strategy 1 and Agriculture and Food Systems Transformation Strategy, Food and Nutrition Security Policy, as well as the National Climate Change Policy, being mainstreamed across all sectors through multi-stakeholder approaches.

However, agricultural, food security and climate policies are often designed at national level and do not capture farming systems’ specific vulnerabilities and local, context-specific adaptation requirements. Data and evidence for context-specific effective responses can inform agricultural program design and match resources with activities.

Moreover, most policies are informed by past and current knowledge. Projections of future conditions are required for in-depth understanding of current and potential vulnerabilities and for developing adaptation options at national and sub-national levels.

The generation of research results and products alone is not enough. Often, research is conducted with limited influence on policy making and action. Policy review is necessary to enable the uptake of the research products and strengthen relevant data collection. There is also a need to build human and institutional capacity to generate and make use of climate knowledge and inform associated extension and climate services, and feedback from applications by farmers.

AgMIP research aims to address these issues by providing tools, data and information to better understand vulnerabilities of agriculture to climate change, and the performance of agriculture under plausible future pathways, and linking national with sub-national levels.

Three future scenarios on agricultural and economic development, Representative Agricultural Pathways (RAPs), were developed to assess future farm vulnerability. One represents a ‘Business as Usual’ scenario, one ‘Sustainable Development’, and one ‘Unsustainable development’.

The RAPs show that agricultural policies can support the transition to inclusive and sustainable development and adaptation strategies by involving all actors.

The analyses of national and regional RAPs demonstrates that the creation of different pathways can help stakeholders and decision makers see the outcomes of different investment strategies.

• Impacts, differentiated for heterogenous farm populations, can provide relevant information for adaptation and mitigation strategies, responsive to different conditions experienced by farm types.

• Environmental, bio-physical and socio-economic trade-offs need to be considered in the design of adaptation and mitigation policies and interventions.

• Assessments at the local level are necessary to understand the response of farming systems to policies and interventions, and to inform actionable policies at national level.  These can be prioritized by national mid-term strategies, including the NAPs, NDCs implementation action plan, development of national climate frameworks

The regional study for Nkayi showed several adaptation measures to improve crop and livestock productivity and income and food security, tailored to the particular regional system. In an iterative process, various adaptation packages were tested during this study. They illustrate the impacts of incremental interventions such as switching to drought tolerant crop varieties, as well as more transformative measures such as diversifying croplands from maize to a variety of crops for food, income and feed, combined with market incentives encouraging higher livestock offtake, and social protection measures to lift extremely poor out of poverty. A step further, mitigation options were also tested, by converting cattle to goats, with the same assumptions of improved feed and health management and market offtake.

The uptake of adaptation options in policies requires an elaborate and continuous process. Participants in AgMIP CLARE workshops drew action plans for collaboration that would support this process. Strategies for this process are outlined in section 4 (Future scenarios).

The insights gained from the RAPs were discussed with stakeholders in several workshops. Below, a summary of action points that may be included in national strategies:

Resilience building through farm and market dynamics: Increased diversification, integration and value addition for crops and livestock, combining biodiversity, sustainable land and water use and value chain approaches to sustainably intensify agricultural production and increase market off-take.

Climate research capacity building and networking: Investment in institutional capacity and human skills, to make use of and strengthen existing local-level research programs, links to stakeholder driven and cross-disciplinary joint ventures, financial inclusiveness, gender responsiveness and equality.

Influencing climate policy: Cross-scale interaction between policy makers, scientists and practitioners to develop a priority agenda for evidence-based climate research, and how to make climate research evidence available and accessible. Evidence-based data and information on adaptation and mitigation impacts to enable policies and risk management and enhance policy implementation.

Gender and social inclusiveness: Scenario based processes and stakeholder engagement as mechanism to create a better understanding of challenges and gaps, and guide policy formulation processes that support gender and social inclusion.

Widening cross-scale dialogue: Creating opportunities for continuous dialogue and collaboration, to  link specific adaptation requirements with national level policy decisions.  Policy dialogue events to showcase key results, partnering with Zimbabwean Government, research and policy advocacy units, and developing policy relevant key messages and briefs.

Strengthening national programs for upscaling: Design collaborative climate research through strategic links to  Government Ministries, to support Zimbabwe’s commitments , e.g. the SDGs, NAP and NDC processes, in response to identified gaps. As a consortium it is more effective to access funding mechanisms, e.g. Green Climate Fund, NAPs, NDCs.

Satellite observations, socioeconomic data and climate model information enabled an analysis of agroclimatic similarity that places regional integrated assessment results in Nkayi within the broader context of Zimbabwe. Nkayi vulnerability and adaptation options reflect multiple aspects of its biophysical, land, socioeconomic and climate conditions, with an emphasis on changing climate also focusing attention on the current, climate shifts, and future climate conditions. Agroclimatic similarity analysis characterized alike conditions across Zimbabwe today and in the future to understand the likelihood that challenges for Nkayi will be similar to those of other portions of the country, as well as to look for regions that currently face challenges similar to what Nkayi will face in the future. Nkayi is most similar to an East-West swath of central Zimbabwe, and in the future this region will face conditions more similar to those observed in Northwestern Zimbabwe today. Zimbabwe features substantial heterogeneity within the country with few dramatic regional gradients; however, proposed adaptations are likely most transferable to regions with similar small-holder crop-livestock systems.

Future climate change