Mitigation or Adaptation to Climate Change? In search of a Sustainable Development Trajectory for post-colonial Zimbabwe

With Dr Eric Kushinga Makombe

This study focuses on and engages with recent global environmental scholarly debates on the best-suited option that a less developed country such as Zimbabwe can adopt between adaptation and mitigation measures that simultaneously ensure sustainable long-term development. Zimbabwe, despite its low carbon footprint, is disproportionately impacted by climate change as evinced by the worst tropical cyclone on record in the Southern Hemisphere, i.e. the 2019 Cyclone Idai, which caused severe flooding in the country and its neighbours, Mozambique and Malawi, and a humanitarian catastrophe of deaths, crops, livestock, and infrastructure loss. This makes our research agenda urgent and relevant.