Second excerpt from International IDEA's Stockholm Series on Climate Change and Democracy lecture by Greta Ríos.
Continued from the first excerpt, from Mexico.
Now I will take you to Zimbabwe, specifically to the town of Chipinge, in the rural district that bears the same name.
People Powered, which I help lead, got to know about Chipinge in the context of our Climate Democracy Accelerator. This programme was initially launched in 2021 and has evolved through four cohorts of participants who are using participatory democracy practices to mitigate the effects of climate change at the local level around the world.
Chipinge is a rural district in the Manicaland province of Zimbabwe. It has around 25,000 inhabitants. This location was chosen by Kudzaiishe Seti, from the local NGO Green Institute, to run a participatory policymaking process due to the vulnerability of the district’s population vis-à-vis the effects of climate change. Kudzaiishe used this project to apply to our Climate Democracy Accelerator and got accepted. This is part of his story.
In previous years, the town of Chipinge had experienced extreme weather phenomena. For example, they were extremely affected by the passage of Cyclone Idai in 2019, which meant that they experienced extreme flooding and heavy rain that lasted for days and left a trail of destruction in its path. While there are national provisions in Zimbabwe to tackle climate change, at the local level things look quite different, as these policies are not properly enforced, and those who suffer all the effects of natural phenomena are the local communities.
This is a common situation in many parts of the globe: national policy is normally created at the top and does not necessarily fit the needs or the capacity of local communities. This is one of the reasons People Powered created the Climate Democracy Accelerator, where we work hand in hand with teams of local governments and civil society groups to develop and implement participatory democracy mechanisms to help people solve these
problems locally, with tailor-made processes that end up with locally actionable plans.
The project that Kudzaiishe and the Green Institute decided to run as part of the People Powered Climate Democracy Accelerator consisted of running a co-creation process among government workers, local authorities and civil society members (including farmer groups), who deliberated on the challenges that Chipinge was facing and that could be addressed through the enactment of a Chipinge climate change policy. The technical term to describe this is ‘participatory policymaking’, and the idea behind it is simple: it means that the government is open to dialogue and co-creation when it comes to designing policies to be later implemented in the community.
The project that Kudzaiishe and the Green Institute decided to run as part of the People Powered Climate Democracy Accelerator consisted of running a co-creation process among government workers, local authorities and civil society members (including farmer groups), who deliberated on the challenges that Chipinge was facing and that could be addressed through the enactment of a Chipinge climate change policy. The technical term to describe this is ‘participatory policymaking’, and the idea behind it is simple: it means that the government is open to dialogue and co-creation when it comes to designing policies to be later implemented in the community.
In the case of Chipinge, the process was particularly insightful because one of the first things that participants pointed out was that, while inhabitants were suffering from the direct consequences of climate change, a large number of them were not aware of what climate change actually meant or of how it could affect them in the future. According to the Green Institute, only one in five residents were aware of what climate change was and of how it was a threat to the community.
After several rounds of discussion took place in Chipinge, the local government ended up with a draft policy on climate change mitigation actions that they committed to enacting as a policy as soon as it was politically possible (elections were just about to take place), as well as action plans for the communities. These action plans include local projects, such as gardens where citizens can grow produce for the community, terracing, reforestation, strengthening Indigenous knowledge systems in agriculture and nature-based solutions in forestry conservation.
A year after the participatory process concluded in Chipinge, there are indicators that deforestation decreased, women’s participation in climate change mitigation increased, and over 50,000 people have learned about climate change and its effects. A really powerful consequence of this project was that nearby towns and communities approached the Green Institute and requested similar processes with the participation of their inhabitants. So far, they have engaged in training councillors, traditional and religious leaders in two districts and are waiting for local funds to be released so they can replicate this process elsewhere, including in other districts.
But let’s go back to Chipinge. An important element about the Chipinge process was that Kudzaiishe made sure that the headmen (as traditional leaders are known in this community) took part in the discussions, and their participation was a key component when itcame to implementing the policy within the communities. This is of particular importance because not only did it mean that the policies would be correctly implemented, but it also helped make the relationship between the local community and the government more collaborative.
A year after the participatory process concluded in Chipinge, there are indicators that show that deforestation decreased, women’s participation in climate change mitigation increased, and over 50,000 people have learned about climate change and its effects. After several rounds of discussion took place in Chipinge, the local government ended up with a draft policy on climate change mitigation actions that they committed to enacting as a policy as soon as it was politically possible (elections were just about to take place), as well as action plans for the communities. These action plans include local projects, such as gardens where citizens can grow produce for the community, terracing, reforestation, strengthening Indigenous knowledge systems in agriculture and nature-based solutions in forestry conservation.
A really powerful consequence of this project was that nearby towns and communities approached the Green Institute and requested similar processes with the participation of their inhabitants. So far, they have engaged in training councillors, traditional and religious leaders in two districts and are waiting for local funds to be released so they can replicate this process elsewhere, including in other districts.
For us at People Powered, these are the kind of results that we want to be able to report on: people self-organizing to get access to innovative ways to use participatory democracy to improve the living conditions in their own communities, people who are learning by example from nearby towns and their decision making processes, and people who are not only able to cope with climate change challenges but are even taking advantage of some of them by introducing new species of fruits and vegetables in their community gardens because the weather now favours them.
They also enacted policies related to clean energy, crop and irrigation changes to provide economic security, prevent erosion, support ecosystems and promote traditional knowledge to do all the above
As you can see, this story also has the three magic elements: people’s realization that what was discussed in the process became a policy that was
enforced successfully and quickly; the ludic component of using participatory democracy to ensure that people were informed about complex social concepts, such as climate change, policymaking and mitigation strategies; the sense within the community that they are empowered to design their own strategies when it comes to facing extreme problems, such as the ones posed by climate change.
In this story, we even find a reconciliation process between the local government and the community. Because these two groups built trust in one another during the participatory policymaking process, they are more likely to work together in the future by using the channel for dialogue that this process helped create.
Just like with participatory budgeting, one of the key components of participatory policymaking (and of all participatory democracy instruments, in fact) is its pedagogical element. People who participate and people who live in the vicinity of those who participate get to learn and forge informed opinions on subject matters that affect their lives, in a contained, joyful and respectful environment, where the learning process is nurtured and encouraged. The best part is that they do not even realize how much they are learning, because they learn while taking part in discussions with their peers.
In the case of Chipinge, after the participatory policymaking process was complete, the community decided to create a brochure on climate change and its effects so everyone could have access to this important information in the future. This pamphlet was published in Ndau and English.
