President Mugabe and First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe arrive at Charles de Gaulle Airport yesterday. The President is in Paris to attend the 21st United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that runs from November 30 until December 11 – Picture by Presidential photographer Joseph Nyadzayo
From Caesar Zvayi in PARIS, France
PRESIDENT Mugabe arrived here yesterday morning to attend the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), COP21 that begins on Monday and runs until December 11.
The President, who is also African Union chairman, was met at Charles De Gaulle Airport by Zimbabwe Ambassador to France Rudo Mabel Chitiga and embassy staff. The President and his delegation that includes First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe, Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi and Environment, Water and Climate Minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, landed in foggy Paris at 10:50am Paris time (11:50am Zimbabwe time).
Initially scheduled to land at Le Bourget Airport, 8km from Charles de Gaulle, the plane had to divert to the larger Charles de Gaulle due to reduced visibility as Paris was engulfed in thick fog with ground temperatures at 1 degree Celsius.
The UNFCCC is an international environmental treaty that was negotiated at the Rio Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992 with the aim of stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that does not pose a danger to life on earth.
Countries like Zimbabwe that have agro-based economies, depend on rain-fed agriculture and that the majority of the population, over 70 percent, living in rural and farming areas, keenly feel the impact of climate change.
Climate change has also manifested in reduced water inflows from northern Zambia, which feeds the mighty Zambezi River, a development that has curtailed the hydropower station’s generation capacity culminating in up to 18 hours of load-shedding in many areas.
As such Zimbabwe and other developed countries are keen on successful deliberations in Paris particularly as experts contend that global warming is impacting sub-Saharan Africa more than any other region because of the region’s over-dependence on rain-fed agriculture.