guest column:Peter Makwanya CLIMATE change has been one of the most talked about subjects of our time. While literature appears in large volumes, one would not imagine that information of such magnitude would not be accessible to the common people whom it is intended to target. This has contributed to information gaps, leading to implementation challenges and disconnection of important stakeholders from the information that they are supposed to use to transform their lives. While a lot has been said and continues to be communicated, the situation on the ground is not pointing towards words being translated into action and outcomes. There are online repositories with unquantifiable volumes of climate change information targeting the wrong audiences. The rightful beneficiaries of such information don’t use the internet and don’t always find it easy to access such information because they don’t have the required tools. Even if some happen to have the tools, data continues to elude them, shutting them out of the discourse. From the target audiences and intended beneficiaries including schools, climate change literature continues to be highly elusive. While the differences in degree of access to information between the intended and actual beneficiaries cannot be quantified, it is actually vast and continues to grow. The goal of climate action strategies is to ensure adaption for resilient building, which in this regard is not difficult to attain, but its efficiency is very hard to judge. This scenario further alienates intended audiences from those who craft the information. Climate change is always uncertain and science does not adequately provide answers to it, hence the information is communicated through many platforms and varied expertise and it reaches the targeted audiences rather weakened and is often misinterpreted thereby contributing to inherent information gaps to the end-users. While the Paris Agreement is very clear on emission reduction, it is not effective in monitoring and enforcing this historical proposition. In this regard, what the Paris Agreement stipulates is not what is happening on the ground, but stakeholders always make reference to it although on the ground carbon inequalities continue to widen. The marked drop in carbon emissions because of COVID-19 is not a result of sterling work being done, but it’s due to reduced activities on the ground as the pandemic rages. In this regard, the relevant authorities cannot use the impacts of COVID-19 to misinform the world about the successes attained in taming greenhouse gas emissions. A lot has also been said about the adoption of emission reduction targets which do not actually translate into adaptation even at local levels. On the ground, stakeholders still have problems in mainstreaming low carbon initiatives by reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) through mitigations, in the form of nationally determined contributions (NDCs). This means all parties have an opportunity to communicate or update their NDCs by 2020, but adaptations have to be ongoing