Time for Zimbabwe to start preparing for the worst

Wisdom Mdzungairi  in News Day (Zimbabwe):  It's time to start protecting people from the impact of severe-weather events as the climate change conversation is shifting. This was disclosed at a meeting of environment stakeholders in Harare last week, a precursor to the launch of Zimbabwes 3rd State of the Environment Report in Harare today to coincide with the World Environment Day (WED) on June 5. The theme for WED 2012 is Green Economy: Does it include you?

But, in the discussions, one thing which came out clear was that political attacks have made environmentalists cautious with respect to how they convey the information generated by their models and empirical studies.

For example, when environmentalists urged government to rethink its decision to permit the construction of a massive hotel on a wetland near the National Sports Stadium, they were attacked left, right and centre.

The implication was that we cannot keep the open area just for frogs. I may not be a scientist myself, but ecologically these play a huge role in terms of purifying our drinking water instead of using the nine water purification chemicals to treat water.

...Nhema told guests the ongoing trend analysis and findings of Zimbabwe Environment Outlook (ZEO)s state of the environment, has shown that rural to urban migration is a major driver of urban environmental challenges....