HUMANITARIAN organisation ActionAid Zimbabwe has called for a robust climate justice action plan to bring to an end the climate change crisis which continues to affect vulnerable communities.
ActionAid said it was disheartening that major economic powers continued to feign innocence over the crisis and had succeeded in perfecting the rhetoric around climate change.
This comes as Zimbabwe and other southern African countries are at the receiving end of climate injustice while the West ducks responsibility.
Addressing delegates and the media during ActionAid’s 20th anniversary and launch of the climate justice action plan, ActionAid Zimbabwe country director Joy Mabenge, said the call for climate justice remained a challenge which needed more robust action.
“The world is in multiple crises and we are not spared. Our systems change for climate justice work recognises the deteriorating climate situation and its impact on human life and the environment, especially among marginalised groups,” Mabenge said.
“There is need to have systems change the approach to the climate crisis through the banks redirecting their finances towards the feminist, green, just alternatives to agriculture through agroecology and fossil fuel through renewable energy.”
He said with robust interventions in place, a fair and just transition to clean and green energy and sustainable agricultural practices in harmony with Mother Nature was possible.
ActionAid International secretary-general Arthur Larok said: “As we celebrate 20 years of fighting poverty and all forms of injustice here in Zimbabwe, it is not lost upon us that the journey has been long and tedious, yet new challenges arise on the horizon.”
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This year, he added, the climate crisis reached alarming and record-breaking levels as the effect of global warming wreaks havoc in the form of extreme weather patterns such as cyclones.
Larok said experts had predicted El Nino-induced dry weather conditions in southern Africa which would severely affect crop yields.
“Sadly, countries and communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America face the direct consequences of a crisis they contributed the least to create. Tales of droughts, cyclones and flooding have become all too familiar with devastating effects on livelihoods consequently.
“Our governments in the global South have to channel substantial resources towards fighting the effects of the climate crisis thus negating critical development goals in essential sectors such as education, health and social protection,” Larok added.
