Zimbabwe's Progress and Recent Impact

Key Insights

Latest Emissions At A Glance

Zimbabwe's latest greenhouse gas emissions are about 31.7 megatonnes of CO2‑equivalents, representing roughly 0.06% of the global total. Per person, emissions are 1.9 tonnes per capita per year, which falls in the Low range on our scale. While comparatively modest, "low" still means emissions are above zero-the level needed to stop adding warming.

Major Gases And Sources

The emissions profile is shared mainly between fossil CO2 and methane. Within fossil CO2, coal is the dominant source and oil follows, together forming the core of energy-related emissions. Methane is similarly prominent, led by livestock, with energy use and waste contributing meaningful portions. Land-use CO2 acts as a modest net sink, offsetting a small share of other emissions. Nitrous oxide is smaller and largely linked to agriculture, while F-gases remain minor.

Decade Trend And Pace

Over the last decade, total emissions have edged up by about 0.6% per year on average, rather than declining. This contrasts with the global benchmark of around a 4% annual reduction needed to align with a net‑zero-by‑2050 pathway. Within the basket, fossil CO2 has been rising faster than the national total, methane has increased slightly, nitrous oxide is roughly flat to marginally down, and F-gases are growing from a low base. The land-use sink has strengthened over time.

Focus Areas And Next Steps

Maintain low per capita levels while supporting development by prioritizing the biggest and fastest-growing sources: slow and reverse growth in coal- and oil-related CO2, curb methane from livestock and waste, and limit fugitive methane releases. Protect and expand land-use sinks to preserve their offsetting role, and monitor rising F-gases. Overall, aim to shift the trajectory from slight growth toward sustained annual declines.

Background

Recent per Capita Emissions

The Recent per Capita Emissions are a crucial indicator of a nation's greenhouse gas emissions. They are a fair measure for comparing the emissions of nations, taking into account the size of their populations.

Because any greenhouse gas emissions above 0 cause warming, the per capita emissions shouldn't be judged against the global average; they should be compared based on how far they are above 0. Therefore, our rating scale is:

Extremely High: above 10 tonnes per capita per year
Very High: above 7.5 tonnes
High: above 5 tonnes
Moderate: above 2.5 tonnes
Low: above 0 tonnes
Negative Emissions: under 0

The per capita emissions should be close to zero for each country, indicated here by the green & low areas.

Last Year Emissions

This is the total amount of CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, and F-Gases emissions of a nation in 2023 (last available year in the data) expressed in megatonnes of CO₂-equivalents. The gases have different atmospheric lifetimes (decay) and warming effects, for this reason, we use the GWP100 (100 year time horizon method) to calculate the global warming potential of CH₄, N₂O, and F-Gases to express them in CO₂-equivalents.

Wikipedia: Global Warming Potential

Last Year Share

This is a nation's share of the global emissions in 2023 (last available year in the data). For many countries this value can be quite small, especially when compared to nations like United States or China. It is easy and dangerous to jump to the conclusion that small shares of emissions don't matter. They matter as a group. Even small emitters can account for a significant amount of total emissions. Consider the following examples:

24 nations, each between 0.5 and 1.5% of the total emissions, make up 20% of the total emissions.
27 nations, each between 0.5 and 2% of the total emissions, make up 25% of the total emissions.
162 nations with a share below 0.5% make up 15% of the total.
3 nations, make 44% of the total emissions: China, United States and India. However, China and India together have a population of about 2.9 billion.

Per Capita Emissions are therefore the most crucial indicator to represent the impact of a nation regardless of its size.

Yearly Emissions Trend

This is a nation's trend per year over the last 10 years. It is a good indicator of the trajectory of national emissions and can be used as a simple framework to judge a nation's trend vs. international goals:

Stop warming around 1.5 °C: All nations together, and each nation, should drop emissions by 17% per year — 8,000 Megatonnes of CO₂ Equivalent per Year.
To achieve Net Zero in 2050 and to stop warming at ~1.7 °C: All nations should together, and each nation, should drop emissions by 4% per year — 2,100 Megatonnes of CO₂ Equivalent per Year.
Additionally, to return warming to pre-industrial levels almost all human-induced CO₂ has to be taken out of the atmosphere.

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About the Data

The last available year in all the emission datasets is 2023. CO₂ emissions data is from the Global Carbon Project. It contains national CO₂ emissions from fossil sources and land-use change. Emissions from CH₄, N₂O and F-gases come from the PRIMAP-Hist dataset. It is a rich dataset that combines several published sources to create a historical emissions time series for various greenhouse gases. Population data are also from Global Carbon Project where available, however, for many nations it doesn't have historic population going back to 1850. Those historic gaps are filled with population data from Our World in Data.

The Key Insights paragraph was created using a large language model (LLM) in combination with our data, historic events, and a structured approach for best accuracy by separating the context generation from the interpretation and narrative.

Data Sources

Global Carbon Budget 2024 Global Carbon Budget
Update cycle: yearlyDelay: ~ 10 months after the end of the year. Current year values are estimated and published in November.Credits: Friedlingstein et al., 2024, ESSD. Friedlingstein, P., O'Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Hauck, J., Landschützer, P., Le Quéré, C., Li, H., Luijkx, I. T., Olsen, A., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Schwingshackl, C., Sitch, S., Canadell, J. G., Ciais, P., Jackson, R. B., Alin, S. R., Arneth, A., Arora, V., Bates, N. R., Becker, M., Bellouin, N., Berghoff, C. F., Bittig, H. C., Bopp, L., Cadule, P., Campbell, K., Chamberlain, M. A., Chandra, N., Chevallier, F., Chini, L. P., Colligan, T., Decayeux, J., Djeutchouang, L., Dou, X., Duran Rojas, C., Enyo, K., Evans, W., Fay, A., Feely, R. A., Ford, D. J., Foster, A., Gasser, T., Gehlen, M., Gkritzalis, T., Grassi, G., Gregor, L., Gruber, N., Gürses, Ö., Harris, I., Hefner, M., Heinke, J., Hurtt, G. C., Iida, Y., Ilyina, T., Jacobson, A. R., Jain, A., Jarníková, T., Jersild, A., Jiang, F., Jin, Z., Kato, E., Keeling, R. F., Klein Goldewijk, K., Knauer, J., Korsbakken, J. I., Lauvset, S. K., Lefèvre, N., Liu, Z., Liu, J., Ma, L., Maksyutov, S., Marland, G., Mayot, N., McGuire, P., Metzl, N., Monacci, N. M., Morgan, E. J., Nakaoka, S.-I., Neill, C., Niwa, Y., Nützel, T., Olivier, L., Ono, T., Palmer, P. I., Pierrot, D., Qin, Z., Resplandy, L., Roobaert, A., Rosan, T. M., Rödenbeck, C., Schwinger, J., Smallman, T. L., Smith, S., Sospedra-Alfonso, R., Steinhoff, T., Sun, Q., Sutton, A. J., Séférian, R., Takao, S., Tatebe, H., Tian, H., Tilbrook, B., Torres, O., Tourigny, E., Tsujino, H., Tubiello, F., van der Werf, G., Wanninkhof, R., Wang, X., Yang, D., Yang, X., Yu, Z., Yuan, W., Yue, X., Zaehle, S., Zeng, N., and Zeng, J.: Global Carbon Budget 2024, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss. [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-519, in review, 2024.

PRIMAP-hist The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series (1750-2023)
Update cycle: Every few monthsDelay: Less than 1 yearCredits: Gütschow, Johannes; Busch, Daniel; Pflüger, Mika (2024): The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series (1750-2023) v2.6. Zenodo.

Our World in Data Population - Our World in Data
Update cycle: YearlyDelay: 7 monthsCredits: HYDE (2023); Gapminder (2022); UN WPP (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data