The Sunday Mail
Caesar Zvayi Herald Editor
PRESIDENT Mugabe left Harare last night for the United Nations headquarters in New York where he will join other world leaders at the High-Level Conference on Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14, commonly called the Oceans Conference.
SDG Goal 14 — which deals with conservation and sustainable use of oceans, seas and marine resources — is integral to safeguarding Earth’s viability and sustainability.
The President is accompanied by First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe; Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi; Environment, Water and Climate Minister Oppah Muchinguri Kashiri; and senior Government officials.
Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa is the Acting President.
The Conference comes at a time the world is in uproar over the United States’ decision to dump the Paris Accord signed by all but two UN member states in April 2016.
The Paris Accord was adopted by 194 of the 196 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in 2015.
In dumping the Paris Climate Change Accord, the US becomes one of only three countries outside the Paris Accord, the other two being Syria and Nicaragua.
Syria failed to sign the Accord due to the debilitating civil war it has been embroiled in since 2011 in which the US has a hand; while Nicaragua is of the view that the voluntary nature of the agreement makes it too soft to compel violators to stick by their environmental protection promises.
Experts contend that implementation of the Accord is essential to achievement of the SDGs and provides a roadmap for actions that will reduce harmful emissions and build climate resilience.
US president Donald Trump on Thursday said he was pulling the country out of the Paris Accord which aims to reduce global temperatures through limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
Greenhouse gases – primarily water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone – absorb and retain heat in the atmosphere.
Under the Paris Agreement, countries set their own greenhouse gas emission reduction targets with the objective of limiting global temperature rise to below two degrees Celsius and to strive for 1,5 degrees Celsius.
Zimbabwe set an emission reduction target of 33 percent by 2020, and President Mugabe set up a high-level committee in his office to drive the efforts.
The world’s oceans — which cover three quarters of the Earth’s surface and contain 97 percent of global water — are major determinants of climatic conditions.
Ocean and sea temperatures drive atmospheric systems that impact on weather and climate and ultimately Earth’s habitability.
Zimbabwe recently suffered the ravages of two phenomena related to changes in ocean temperatures: the El Nino-induced drought of 2015 and the cyclone-related floods of the 2016/17 summer cropping season.
El Nino is the warming of the ocean surface, or above-average sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean resulting in low pressure areas
Climate experts have found strong connections between El Nino and intense drought in parts of east and southern Africa as well as Australia, India, Indonesia, The Philippines and Brazil.
The warming of ocean surfaces can also lead to development of tropical cyclones and depressions which bring heavy rainfall.
Global average temperatures have already climbed by almost one degree Celsius and 2015 — which was the hottest on record — saw Zimbabwe experience a heatwave that broke decades-old temperature records culminating in some road surfaces melting and livestock dying from heat stress.
Climate change also manifested in reduced water inflows from northern Zambia, which feeds the Zambezi River, a development that has curtailed the hydro-power station’s electricity generation capacity.
