By Leonissah Munjoma – SANF 04 no 29
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) will this year publish the second state of the environment report entitled the Southern Africa Environment Outlook.
The first such report was published in 1994 under the name, State of the Environment in Southern Africa. As state of the environment reports are increasingly being used for early warning and policy planning and implementation, such reports are being called outlook reports.
State of the Environment (SOE) reporting is one of the tools used to monitor and assess changes in the environment. The preparation of SOE reports enables countries, regions and the world to plan for effective environmental management. Such reporting dates back to the 1970s.
The Southern Africa Environment Outlook is to be published under a Communicating the Environment Programme (CEP), a longstanding partnership involving SADC, IUCN – The World Conservation Union and the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC).
Under the recently launched Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP), SADC considers environment and sustainable development as a vehicle to ensure equitable and sustainable use of the environment and natural resources for the benefit of both present and future generations.
As such, the regional grouping has mainstreamed the environment in its programmes, treating it as a cross cutting issue that “will present opportunities for the region to advance its programme of action in environment and natural resources management and forge harmonisation of and compliance with environmental policies, standards and guidelines.”
The CEP objective is to inform, motivate and empower people at all levels of environmental decision-making in southern Africa, from the individual and NGOs to the private sector and governments, to take positive actions to counter environmental degradation and move towards sustainable development paths by providing them with clear, objective and meaningful information on the environment.
The partnership also facilitates communication and understanding between environmental groups and decision-makers.
CEP is also the vehicle through which the region participates in environmental reporting at continental and global levels. SARDC is the regional collaborating centre for UNEP in preparing the AEO and the GEO.
At a meeting held to review the SAEO draft at the end of March in Pretoria, South Africa, SADC Environment Advisor, Stephen Nanthambwe highlighted the importance of state of the environment reporting in SADC’s development process, particularly under RISDP.
Sustainable development is one of the areas of focus under RISDP and within this, regular reporting of state of the environment has been identified as one area of activity, he said adding that production of the SAEO report is one of the activities to be carried out at five-year intervals. “We hope to put mechanisms in place to ensure this is done every five years,” he said.
The review meeting, attended by environment experts from throughout southern Africa, agreed on a working theme and structure for the report. The theme of the report is Trends, Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Livelihoods.
Some of the chapters included in the report are: Land, Atmosphere, Freshwater Resources, Marine and Coastal Resources, Wildlife Resources, Forests and Woodlands, Human Settlements and Scenarios/Outlook.
Nanthambwe said publication of the second report in August was deliberately set to coincide with the SADC Summit during which the book will be launched. One of the goals of the SADC Policy and Strategy for Environment and Sustainable Development is to ‘increase public information, education and participation on environment and development issues in southern Africa.’ It is hoped that the state of the environment reporting fulfills this goal.
Munyaradzi Chenje, the Africa Regional Coordinator for UNEP’s Division of Early Warning and Assessment, echoed Nanthambwe’s sentiments in which he noted the importance of southern Africa’s Environment Outlook as a key input to the continental Africa Environment Outlook and the Global Environment Outlook.
The workshop also noted other on-going regional initiatives such as the indicator strategy for state of the environment reporting and the integrated development geographical information systems for SADC countries, as key to the environmental assessments and reports such as the Southern Africa Environment Outlook. (SARDC)
