Comprehensive Resilience Building in the Chimanimani and Chipinge Districts

IHP-WINS
2025-05-25T10:54:34.868084+00:00

Zimbabwe is exposed to multiple weather-related hazards, suffering from frequent periodic cyclones, droughts, floods, and related epidemics and landslides. On 15 March 2019, tropical Cyclone Idai hit eastern Zimbabwe, and at least 172 deaths were reported, more than 186 people were injured and 327 were missing, while over 270,000 people were affected across nine districts, particularly in Chimanimani and Chipinge. Of those affected, 20,002 households (61.5%) or 100,106 people (74.2% of the 2012 population) were in Chimanimani. Meanwhile, ecosystem damage also occurred where boulders and mud were dumped downhill, affecting wildlife habitats, water quality, tourism activities and usability of land resources. The cyclone’s aftermath has therefore increased environmental risks, which will in turn affect local adaptation. Loss of vegetation cover means the natural defense against future flood waters and landslides is no longer available. Similar events in future are therefore likely to cause even more destruction.The overall objective of the initiative is therefore to reduce the vulnerability of communities in the Chimanimani and Chipinge Districts to natural disasters, such as floods, droughts and landslides; and to enhance water resource management as well as ecosystem services in response to the uncertainty of future climate change.The project is designed to approach the water-related risk and vulnerability through an integrated strategy that targets several aspects of disaster risk reduction, and provides scalable implementation of the project through a modular pathway and the development of case studies in target flood and landslide prone areas.