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Paper short abstract

This paper shows how community-led climate and health task teams in marginalised rural Zimbabwe redistribute power, strengthen local resilience, and challenge top-down development models thus demonstrating that climate-resilient development is a political process grounded in community agency.

Paper long abstract

Climate change is intensifying structural vulnerabilities in marginalised regions, positioning health systems as critical arenas where power, inequality, and resilience converge. In Zimbabwe’s historically under-resourced Binga district, recurrent floods, heatwaves, and climate-sensitive disease outbreaks have exposed the limitations of top-down development and adaptation models. This paper examines how community- and district-level Climate and Health Task teams, initiated under Pangaea Zimbabwe’s Wild4Life programme, reconfigure local power relations and promoting community agency.

The paper draws on a case study analysing an intervention that institutionalised participatory climate governance within local health and community systems. The initiative established district and ward Climate and Health Task Teams, integrated community voices into health planning, invested in climate-resilient infrastructure, and strengthened the capacities of frontline health workers. Rather than positioning communities as passive beneficiaries, the model foregrounded local knowledge, collective action, and co-production of climate responses.

After one year, all 17 targeted health facilities (100%) were upgraded to climate-resilient standards and equipped with renewable energy, mobile outreach services expanded by 50% to reach remote populations and locally led climate-health initiatives continued beyond external project funding. Importantly, community leaders, women, youth, and frontline health workers emerged as advocates and role models for climate-responsive health and livelihood practices, challenging entrenched hierarchies between technical experts and local actors.

The paper reveals that climate-resilient development is not only a technical endeavour but a political process requiring the redistribution of power and recommends institutionalising community-led climate-health governance within national systems and recognition of community agency as a central pillar of climate justice.