Farming In A Climate Smart Way During & After Covid-19

By Shingirai Vambe

Harare- Regarded as a disaster or biological warfare Covid-19 brought in a new chapter to life as most of the people migrated to their rural homes and farms and some had the chance for family bonding and gardening while others had to put an extra effort on their small pieces of land.

There is a high increase in hot-cultural produce which made people get an extra dollar for survival but the way at which they produced was somehow affected by low levels of water which also affected livestock and to this day wild animals are dying to these effects of climate change.

Other than fertilizers, farmers are urged to use manure in both domestic and commercial farming, is this the climate smart way of farming? expects from the Climate Change Department in the ministry of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry are conducting a training in that regard to ensure there is reduction in greenhouse gases and emissions.

Climate Change continue to affect human day to day living, the thrust is to see if there is progress towards achieving these legally binding greenhouse emissions reduction targets which is monitored using indicators obtained from measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) arrangements.

Climate Change expect, Lawrence Mashungu told Post On Sunday that The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) through its IPCC 1996, GPG 2000, IPCC 2006 and IPCC 2019 guidelines,
provides guidance on MRV systems for assessing greenhouse inventory sources and sinks as well as mitigation
potential.

“Beyond 2020, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is stepping-up its climate action by enhancing MRV systems to assess the impacts of these efforts on reducing global greenhouse emissions” Mashungu said.

He further highlighted that Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector contributes up to 25 % of global anthropogenic greenhouse emissions, with livestock, land use change and management having a significant influence on the greenhouse concentrations in the atmosphere corresponding to methane (CH 4 ) from enteric fermentation and non-CO 2 from managed land such as nitrous oxide (N 2 O) from agricultural soils and burning of biomass from savannas (IPCC, 2014).

Through the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the training is expected to run for a week in Kadoma and will facilitate interaction between current and prospective experts from various public research institutions with such objectives as to provide an overall understanding of the greenhouse emission sources and sinks in AFOLU sector.

It will also provide capacity building on the UNFCCC and IPCC guidelines and software on greenhouse inventory preparation and to design the road map for enhancing activity data and development of country-specific emission factors.

This will however corroborate with the Energy and Power Development framework on bio-gas digestors which is most cases use animal waste to produce cooking gas before the manure is used for farming.

The desired outcome is to understand the UNFCCC and IPCC guidelines on GHG inventory
preparation, able to participate in compilation of future greenhouse inventories for the AFOLU sector and to conduct more research on activity data and emission factors to improve the quality of greenhouse inventories for the AFOLU sector.