HARARE mayor Jacob Mafume has called for the development of a comprehensive environmental and climate change policy aimed at engaging residents in shaping the city’s ecological future.
Addressing journalists at Town House recently, Mafume said the goal is to align the city’s climate management efforts with local needs and concerns.
Ultimately, he said, this would foster a more sustainable urban environment as the threats of climate change intensify daily.
“It has been decided that we come up with a city environmental and climate change policy using the bottom up community participatory approach.
“We want to draft this policy, and that is why we have called the representative of the residents so that at least we are in sync with the cause to manage our climate, (a crisis) that is growing on a day-to-day basis,” Mafume said.
“First step, we will set up our aims and intentions to enable the city to take measures that are necessary, that are critical for us to be able to manage our environment and our climate.
“We also want to enhance our reputation in terms of climate management and environmental management is not as good as it should be and that relates to waste management, the environment itself, wetlands and so forth.”
He said authorities need to up their game in getting a share of the various climate funds available globally.
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“As a city, we are going to be applying for them to make sure that we are part and parcel of that. Our city is going to join other cities that have associations relating to the climate so that we sign commitments as a city that relate to climate issues,” the mayor said.
“We have current challenges that are affecting this sector. The current challenges are around water and sanitation, wetland invasion and degradation, water pollution, shelter and housing, illegal sand and gravel mining, air pollution, among other things and these are the things we need to be able to create,” he added.
Mafume said discussions were underway with Zesa Holdings to explore the feasibility of re-establishing a renewable energy source in the city.
“We need to come up with a way to mitigate our energy demand in Harare and also create a new energy source. As you will recall, as the city council, we used to have our own power station, 120 megawatts and that power station, it was taken by Zesa and it is not producing, but it was a coal-based power station.
“We need to move to renewable energy and we are in discussions with Zesa and other private actors if we can do solar, an accumulation of 10 megawatts there will be areas of collaboration that will come up in terms of this policy,” he said.
Mafume also called for collaborations with the private, non-governmental organisation and government sectors on issues around the greening of the city.
“Our next budget is going to be centred on sustainable policies and one of the sustainable policies will be about greening the city,” he said.
