AN ongoing assessment by the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO-ROSA) together with its local and international partners indicates that Chipinge and Chimanimani Districts in Manicaland province are amongst the most flood prone areas in Southern Africa, making them highly susceptible to devastating landslides.
By Michael Gwarisa
This comes at the back of revelations by the Catholic University of Leuven which has already mapped out about 20,000 active landslides in the two districts (mainly connected to the cyclone Idai event) using remote sensing data. The field assessment includes a general assessment from 5 to 13 July and further field research measurements until the end of July 2021.
Representing the UNESCO ROSA Regional Director, Professor Hubert Gijzen during a virtual meeting media briefing on Landslides Project In Chimanimani And Chipinge Districts, Professor Martiale Zebaze Kana, Programme Specialist, UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa said UNESCO has engaged local and international experts to develop landslide susceptibility maps that indicate landslides hazards in the two districts as a first step.
I would like to start by extending my appreciation to the Zimbabwe Idai Recovery Project (ZIRP) team who are leading the Cyclone Idai Recovery efforts, funded by the World Bank and managed by UNOPS.
“It is through this project that UNESCO has been mandated to implement an initiative on Comprehensive Resilience Building in Chimanimani and Chipinge districts. This project focusses on reducing the vulnerability of communities to natural disasters, such as floods, droughts and landslides; and to enhance water resource management as well as ecosystem services in response to the uncertainty of future climate change,” said Prof Kana.
He added that UNESCO assists countries to build their capacities in managing disaster and climate risk through supporting their efforts in preventing, mitigating the effect of and coping with disasters and it was against this background that UNESCO is carrying out the landslides assessments in Zimbabwe, and in Chimanimani and Chipinge in particular.
According to UNESCO, Zimbabwe is currently exposed to multiple weather-related hazards, suffering from frequent periodic cyclones, droughts, floods, and related epidemics and landslides. However, under the World Bank Funded Zimbabwe Idai Recovery Project (ZIRP), UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa (ROSA) is implementing the project ‘Comprehensive Resilience Building in the Chimanimani and Chipinge Districts’ with the objective of reducing the vulnerability of communities in the Chimanimani and Chipinge Districts to natural disasters,
Nicholas Callender the World Bank (WB) Disaster Risk Management Specialist and Task Team Leader of Zimbabwe Idai Recovery Project said they are providing funding to the boost resilience and improve livelihoods of the people in the affected areas.
“As the World Bank, we are guided by three priorities in all the work that we do- Helping create sustainable economic growth, investing in people and building resilience to shocks and threats that can roll back decades of progress. The Zimbabwe Idai Recovery Project, which we have funded to the tune of $72 million is proving to be a successful model for resilience building and addressing these priority areas.
“The Zimbabwe Idai Recovery Project (ZIRP) has brought together 8 specialist UN agencies under one project leveraging on their comparative advantage. This is the first time that UN agencies have worked together under one grant in this manner.
“Secondly, ZIRP has been able to transverse the humanitarian-development nexus through a surge of high-impact, immediate interventions for enhancing the coping capacity of affected communities, transition towards medium-term recovery, such as the restoration of community productive capacities and rehabilitation of critical community infrastructure, across multiple sectors; and, now interventions to reduce community hazard risk vulnerability through community level structural and non-structural rehabilitation development,” said Callender.
The ZIRP is the first UN joint effort that integrates eight agency’s activities and leverages each other’s comparative advantage. Translating to multiplied and more significant impact for Cyclone affected communities.
