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Wild Resources in Zimbabwe: the Challenges - the Opportunities









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    Sustainable food cold chains: Opportunities, challenges and the way forward 2022
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    An estimated 14 percent of the total food produced for human consumption is lost, while 17 per cent is wasted. This is enough to feed around 1 billion people in a world where currently 811 million people are hungry and 3 billion cannot afford a healthy diet. The lack of effective refrigeration is a leading contributor to this challenge, resulting in the loss of 12 percent of total food production, in 2017. Moreover, the food cold chain is responsible for 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, including from cold chain technologies and food loss and waste due to lack of refrigeration. This report explores how food cold chain development can become more sustainable and makes a series of important recommendations. These include governments and other cold chain stakeholders collaborating to adopt a systems approach and develop National Cooling Action Plans, backing plans with financing and targets, implementing and enforcing ambitious minimum efficiency standards. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer – a universally ratified multilateral environmental agreement – can contribute to mobilizing and scaling up solutions for delivering sustainable, efficient, and environmentally friendly cooling through its Kigali Amendment and Rome Declaration. Reducing non-CO2 emissions, including refrigerants used in cold chain technologies is key to achieve the Paris Agreement targets, as highlighted in the latest mitigation report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). At a time when the international community must act to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, sustainable food cold chains can make an important difference.
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    Integration of environment and nutrition in life cycle assessment of food items: opportunities and challenges 2021
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    This report is the outcome of a consensus-building project to agree on best practices for environmental and nutritional Life Cycle Assessment (nLCA) methodology, and identify future research needs. The project involved 30 nutritional and environmental LCA researchers from 18 countries. It focused on the assessment of food items (as opposed to meals or diets). Best practice recommendations were developed to address the intended purpose of an LCA study and related modeling approach, choice of an appropriate functional unit, assessment of nutritional value, and reporting nLCA results. An nLCA study should report the quantities of as many essential nutrients as possible and aim to provide information on the nutritional quality and/or health impacts in addition to nutrient quantities. Outstanding issues requiring further research attention include: defining a minimum number of nutrients to be considered in an nLCA study; treatment of nutrients to limit; use of nutrient indexes; further development of Impact Assessment methods; representation of nutritional changes that may occur during subsequent distribution and food preparation in cradle-to-gate nLCA studies; and communication of data uncertainty and variability. More data are required for different regions (particularly developing countries); for the processing, distribution, retail, and consumption life cycle stages; and for food loss and waste. Finally, there is a need to extend nLCA methodology for the assessment of meals and diets, to consider further how to account for the multi-functionality of food in a sustainability framework, and to set nLCA studies within the context of environmental limits. These results provide a robust basis for improving nLCA methodology and applying it to identify solutions that minimize the trade-offs between nourishing populations and safeguarding the environment.
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    Climate change, rural livelihoods and migration nexus in Zimbabwe
    Impacts on rural livelihoods and adaptation
    2024
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    By the late 21st century, Africa is likely to experience warming and increased climate variability, which have been linked to adverse economic outcomes. Human-induced climate change, including more frequent and intense extreme events, has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people beyond natural climate variability. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th Assessment Report’s (2021) continental projections for Africa indicate a projected increase in temperature and weather extremes. In the Zimbabwean context, there are already indications that rising temperatures and increasing rainfall variability are affecting agricultural outputs and, with that, food and nutrition security. Migration is one possible adaptation strategy in the context of climate change, alongside other possible responses. The Labour Force and Child Labour Survey indicates that approximately 124 000 people left their homes in search of better agricultural land, with another 4 000 people reported being displaced by extreme events between 2011 and 2019 in Zimbabwe. Earlier research indicates that 44 percent of the total 1.6 million Zimbabweans in South Africa are believed to have migrated because of drought-related food insecurity. This study aimed to investigate the climate change–migration nexus in selected provinces in Zimbabwe, including the influence of climate and environmental factors on rural migration patterns and the relationship between migration and climate change adaptation.

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