Towards a Common Vision of Climate, Peace, Security and Migration in Zimbabwe

Jul 1, 2024 | Giulia Caroli, Cedric De Coning, Gracsious Maviza, Joram Tarusarira, Henintsoa Onivola Minoarivelo, and Nqobile Moyo
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Zimbabwe is one of the countries in Southern Africa most affected by climate variability and change. This year, Zimbabwe experienced its worst drought in decades, affecting more than 80 percent of its population and leading to a declaration of a state of national disaster by the President. With climate impacts becoming more frequent and pervasive, risks to social cohesion, resilience, stability, and peace are on the rise, reshaping the country’s security and development landscape and making it more complex. Critical questions thus arise concerning what can be done and who would be best positioned to drive responses. There are no fixed answers to this, but recent developments in the national climate change policy architecture can open a window of opportunity for integrating elements of conflict-sensitivity and peacebuilding. This approach cannot be pursued by the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Wildlife alone; instead, it requires multi-stakeholder collaboration where all the concerned humanitarian, development, and peace sector actors play a role based on their respective expertise, skills and mandates.