Climate change and policy making in Zimbabwe. In search of evidence based policy making?

Abstract

This paper examines the capacity of Zimbabwean policy makers to access and use climate change research outputs for evidence based climate change policy making. Due to impacts of climate change on developing countries, many stakeholders are now calling for crafting of national climate change strategic plans to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. However one of the main challenges affecting policy makers is access to research evidence in order to come up with evidence based policies. To achieve the study objective, a mixed method approach was adopted. Findings show that there are a number of challenges facing researchers and policy makers in Zimbabwe which are inadvertently affecting evidence based climate change policy making. These challenges range from the general weak and non performing economy which over the years has created an environment not conducive for research as well as minimising avenues for accessing state of the art research around climate change issues. Low Information, Communication Technologies literacy is also limiting access to databases and online sources with topical issues on climate change.