Climate harzard management to promote sustainable land management in dry region of Gokwe, Zimbabwe

The major aim of the study was to assess the risk affecting sustainable land management and its implications on sustainable development in Gokwe. The dry region of Gokwe suffers from unsustainable land uses that have been experienced over the last decade. The spiral of environmental degradation facing the study area is both anthropogenic and natural in nature and origin. These factors include demographic failure, climatic variability, information failure, market failure, institutional crisis and educational failure. Land degradation owing to both human and natural factors is usually not in tandem with the regenerative capacities of the land. Land use activities are degrading the local environment in a way that ultimately undermines local ecosystem services, human welfare, and the long term sustainability of human societies. The study utilized both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. The research noted that changes in climatic patterns have the potential to change current land management practices. With additional increasing commercialisation and expansion of agriculture and its integration into international markets and supply chains, the new risk management approaches are required that are adapted to the agricultural and rural sectors, and to the pervasive risk affecting those sectors (Murhpree, 2004; Snapp et al., 2003). The research further noted that farming and land management activities in the study area are exposed to seasonal climatic risks arising from inter-annual climatic variability and anthropogenic perturbations of the climatic system, which have resulted in more frequent extreme weather events. The major element of agricultural and risk management in Gokwe should include efficient use of inherently variable natural resources (for example, run off), and measures to increase the resilience of land and crop management systems against seasonal climate threats (for example, droughts and floods). There is need to develop land management information systems, which have routine inventories of the natural resource base, key assets in the productive sectors, and updating the vulnerability profiles. There is also need for development of multi-sector risk management frameworks that clearly delineate and facilitate public and private sector responsibility in climate risk management, and a fundamental element of such a framework should be effective multilevel and multi-sector stakeholder coordination.