Let’s be ready as climate models predict drought

Source: Let’s be ready as climate models predict drought – herald

Some five months ahead of the onset of the summer rains, experts have sounded a warning.

As they always do, they have been doing climate modelling focusing on the October 2026-March 2027 rainy season, and the prediction is that the period will be marred by a moderate-to-very-strong El Niño weather phenomenon, which is likely to result in a severe drought in our country and elsewhere in southern Africa.

The just-ended season was decent, so was the previous one, but 2024 was a disaster. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly impossible for us to experience three consecutive seasons of good rainfall. It is one big season here, a poor one there and flooding in between. Everything is erratic and gloomy, unlike in the past when droughts tended to visit in 10-year cycles.

We cite the Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, Dr Anxious Masuka elsewhere today, as telling a Joint Meeting of SADC Ministers responsible for Agriculture, Food Security, Fisheries and Aquaculture in Victoria Falls yesterday, that the region must act now to cushion communities and economies from climate-related shocks.

“Climate change has become an everyday reality,” he worried.

“We see this manifested through more frequent droughts, extreme heat and floods. The development of a super El Niño in the 2026/2027 season, as predicted by early climate models, should spur us to develop appropriate mitigation and adaptation measures.”

SADC deputy executive secretary for regional integration, Ms Angele Makombo N’Tumba told the same meeting that there is a 77 percent likelihood of a moderate-to-very-strong El Niño event developing between October 2026 and January 2027.

We are headed for one of our severest droughts in recent memory, but the good thing is that no one will be taken by surprise. Governments, development partners, farmers, input suppliers and so on have been warned five months in advance to expect a drought.

The time to prepare for a worse case than 77 percent probability of a drought is now. We must not expect anything wetter; it is not a strategic posture to adopt. The strategic one is to expect a worse out-turn so that if that is what turns out, we would have prepared for it, and if we have the blessing of a wetter season, then we will reap big.

This means an intensified push for the Pfumvudza/Intwasa Climate-Proofed farming strategy. Authorities can enrol more farmers under the scheme, distribute the inputs on time and push them to prepare their plots on time.

We encourage farmers to adopt this farming model even if they aren’t enrolled on the Government-funded one.
Crop and variety selection must also bear in mind that we are heading towards a drier wet season, which means greater emphasis on hardier crops and shorter season varieties.

The Meteorological Service Department must be on its toes, studying the elements and their possible impacts and breaking them down for farmers to respond as they should.

Livestock producers must ensure that they harvest every blade of grass that shoots up because a drier wet season means poorer pastures until the next rainy season in October 2027. If they harvest the feed and store it, they can always feed their animals during what is set to be a long, lean season next year.

If we prepare well, we stand a great chance of limiting the impact of the El Niño event.