The impacts of Climate change need no introduction anymore, since they have been laid bare for all to see in our daily lives. Climate change has become a threat multiplier; it amplifies the existing threats and is increasing problems for the economy, environment and society. In Zimbabwe, erratic rainfall has led to successive droughts which are one of the major impacts related to climate change amongst other impacts such as extreme weather events. Cyclone Idai (2019) has been recorded as one of the latest climate induced disaster to hit the country and the region with major impacts in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi. Recent events have almost defined what climate change is and what to expect in the future with absolute certainty.
Central to the climate change discussion is a complex issue to the discourse on climate finance. Climate finance has been such a critical issue to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to the extent that they are no agreed definitions yet on climate finance. The term climate finance has been emotionally loaded at the international convention as the globe tries to qualify the finance in reference to development assistance. Efforts from developing countries have been to ensure that climate finance is a top up to the traditional development finance rather than a replacement. Developing countries however have no control on the current development finance as they are not bound by any global agreements, hence cannot ascertain if climate finance is truly a new finance or a reinvention of the traditional finance.
Despite all the controversy of the climate flows, there is a general consensus on what the finance should target. Climate finance comprises of financial support for mitigation and adaptation activities, including capacity building, research and development as well as issues related to decarbonisation and climate resilient development. The two generally used definitions of climate finance are from the UNFCCC standing committee on Finance that has defined climate finance as financial transactions “that aims at reducing emissions and enhancing sinks of greenhouse gases. Climate finance facilitates reduction of vulnerability and increasing the resilience of human and ecological systems to negative climate change impacts”. The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014) concluded that there is no agreed definition but that the term is applied to financial resources devoted to addressing climate change globally and to the financial flows to developing countries to assist them in addressing climate change.
Zimbabwe as a signatory to the Paris Agreement (PA) is entitled to receive climate finance, which is mainly categorised as Mitigation finance and Adaptation finance. Whilst climate finance is divided into these two categories, it is part of a broader discourse on sustainable finance that deals on the provision of finance to investments taking into account environmental, social and governance considerations.
