BY HARRIET CHIKANDIWA Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Hospitality Industry Munesu Munodawafa said government had created a climate change resilient programme to effectively deal with the effects of climate change. Munodawafa told delegates at a national adaptation workshop held in Harare on Wednesday that the impact of climate change needed not to be overemphasised, given the extreme weather events such as flooding and droughts on the increase in recent years. “Rainfall seasons are increasingly becoming uncertain threatening livelihoods, economic performance and the situation is worsened by the relationship between poor rainfall and GDP (gross domestic product) performance and this calls for climate action,” Munodawafa said. He said the government had responded to the urgent need for climate change by facilitating an enabling environment for climate change programming in the country. “As the country develops its medium-term development strategy, it is making concerted efforts to integrate climate change issues in the plans to ensure our development efforts are climate-proofed against unprecedented climate change vagaries.” Munodawafa said as part of the mainstream agenda, it was critical to establish a national system for tracking adaptation and resilience building interventions informed by project and programme-based monitoring. He said the country needed to enhance co-ordination, coherence and meaningful impact of targeted climate change programming in line with the National Development Strategy (2021-2025). “There is need for the country to collectively take climate action in order to develop in a low carbon trajectory while building resilient and climate-proof communities and socio-economic sectors alike.” Munodawafa said there was need to develop a common theory of change for adaptation that will inform Zimbabwe National Adaptation Planning process in the medium-to-long-term.