This page presents Zambia''s climate context for the current climatology, 1991
Historically, Zambia is frequently inundated with seasonal floods and flash floods,
CHONGWE, Zambia—Benson Chipungu sits in a leather armchair and reaches for the remote to switch off the news. Pieces of fabric hang over the windows, darkening the room against the heat. A gas-powered hand-plough is parked in the corner. On the floors behind his chair, dozens of ears of corn are spread out, a display of the paltry crop the 56-year-old farmer managed to salvage from his rain-starved soil.
Everyone here, in this country of nearly 20 million people, is nervously doing the same thing. It''s too late for the rain.
Corn, or maize as most people here call it, is the lifeblood of the country''s diet, eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the form of "nshima," a high calorie, polenta-like porridge made from ground corn known as mealie meal. Unless they''ve had nshima, most Zambians feel like they haven''t eaten.
The corn processed into mealie meal depends on a rainy season that begins around planting time in November or December and ends in March or April, with the harvest. But this year very little rain has fallen and unusual heat has stressed the crop even more. Even if it rains now, farmers will harvest a fraction of their normal crop. The country expects a 50 to 60 percent reduction in yields.
At the end of February, facing a hunger crisis, Zambia''s president made the politically difficult move of declaring a national emergency—the first in 40 years. Worsening matters, the water levels on the Zambezi River are so low that turbines at the massive Kariba Dam, the country''s primary source of power, could sputter and stop. Ten days after the emergency declaration, the government imposed "load shedding" measures that requires every customer in the country to go without power for eight hours every day for the next two months. Normally these measures aren''t implemented until the end of the dry season in October.
In recent decades a boom in mining and agriculture led the World Bank to reclassify Zambia from a "least developed country" to a "middle income country." Its capital, Lusaka, has sprouted new office towers, shopping malls, hospitals and a growing professional class—all the signs of an upward economy, of the kind the global North has experienced for a century, abetted by fossil fuels. But the COVID crisis knocked the country off course and it became the first African country to default on its sovereign debt.
Rain grows its food and powers its energy grid; rain keeps the lights on and the fans blowing in supermarkets, barber shops and roadside restaurants. Rain cranks operations at Zambia''s lucrative copper and cobalt mines, essential not just for Zambia''s economy, but the global energy transition.
A country''s food insecurity is usually the result of complex, intertwined factors—bad weather, economic problems, war or conflict—that complicate the process of attributing food shortages or malnutrition to climate change. But in Zambia, right now, the link between hunger and climate change is unusually stark.
Warming waters off the African continent''s coast, heated by the burning of fossil fuels, are accelerating atmospheric changes here and supercharging the weather phenomenon known as El Niño. It''s hot and dry here—and will get hotter and drier in some areas, and wetter and more flood-prone in others. For a country that depends almost entirely on rain, the lack or over-abundance of it means big trouble. This atmospheric see-saw will test the country''s infrastructure, notably the beleaguered Kariba Dam and the reservoir it holds back, the largest in the world.
None of this is the fault of the people who live here, but they''re the ones left to cope with the vagaries of their once-reliable rainfall. Historical per-capita greenhouse gas emissions here, as in most African countries, are relatively tiny. The Zambian government, like those in many other developing countries, is calling for help.
"We are suffering because the climate has changed," said Collins Nzovu, the head of Zambia''s ministry for green economy and environment. "We have never suffered a drought like this."
Nzovu, who led the African Group of Negotiators at the recent United Nations climate negotiations in Dubai, believes it''s past time for rich, higher-emitting countries to compensate his. They should, he said, go beyond funding efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions or adapt to climate change. They should pay for what''s known in global climate-negotiation-speak as "loss and damage"—the impacts of climate change that can''t be adapted to or mitigated.
Across the country, people plant corn everywhere—in small patches at the side of the road, in family gardens and in acres of farm fields. Most of it is stunted, its blonde, crispate leaves crinkling in the hot breeze.
Chipungu walked out to his fields, where he grows corn and peanuts, called groundnuts here.
He grew up on this land. He can point to his village, a cluster of low-slung houses in the near distance, and to his parents'' graves. He hopes one of his five children will show interest in taking over the farm, but they''re in the city, pursuing marketing and engineering jobs. He doesn''t blame them. Farming here has always been tough, and climate change has made it harder.
"We need investment in wind and solar, in irrigation, even for a small farm like this," Chipungu says. "We need to change or we won''t survive."
Nearly everyone in this country comes from a village where their parents lived and their parents before that. The village is a touchstone, a connection to the past. It''s also a security blanket of sorts.
Jairos Nyamowa, amiable and quick to smile, drives taxis in Lusaka, but like most people here, he also farms. Back in his village, he has a small plot where he grows corn and a garden where his family grows vegetables. If life in the city goes sideways, he knows he can at least count on that.
"You go to the city to try, and if you fail, you go back to the village," he says. "And then you go back to the city and try again."
Small-scale farmers like Nyamowa provide 95 percent of Zambia''s staple crop. Much of it is consumed here; some is exported.
But the security that these small farms provide—the farming equivalent of a savings account—feels unsettled these days. There''s nothing secure about it anymore. This year has made that obvious.
In Lusitu, a village in the country''s hot south—its historical breadbasket—farmers are learning to adapt. They''re planting trees for shade and drought-tolerant crops, like millet, sorghum and cassava.
Dickson Matulula spends a lot of time on farms, but dresses like he''s going to an office, his black shoes covered in dust. Matulula is the climate change coordinator for the aid group Catholic Relief Services, and works with farmers in this village and others throughout Zambia, to help them try out these new "climate smart" strategies. These adaptation methods are not just the key to helping farmers feed themselves, they''re critical for the country''s development and future.
Corn is a water-hungry crop, but in a country where nshima is the major source of calories, farmers will continue to plant it for the foreseeable future. When asked what they will eat if the corn fails, many Zambians struggle to come up with an answer. A diet without nshima is unthinkable.
The people who live in Lusitu are the family and offspring of those who were displaced when the nearby Kariba Dam was built in the late 1950s to harness the power of the Zambezi. The construction of the dam flooded their ancestral lands. They''re not inclined to move again.
"It will continue to be dry here. It will continue to be dry everywhere. We can''t move. We have to find the best solution here."
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