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This paper provides an overview of some of the significant environmental problems in the Southern African region. The key problems highlighted are global warming and climate variability, loss of biodiversity, deforestation, desertification-land degradation, waste and littering, population growth, urbanization, pollution, poverty and health hazards. These problems present a challenge to governments and other players within and outside Southern Africa to seek for long-term solutions by addressing the root causes of these problems. The paper notes that although the environmental problems facing the Southern African region are being tackled at national, regional and international levels, there is more that can be done. At the national level, the different agencies and players, both within and outside government need to strengthen coordination and implementation of key interventions in different sectors in both rural and urban areas. At the African regional and international levels, there is a need to address geopolitical forces and issues that contribute to the underdevelopment of the African region. Among the major issues are poor terms of international trade, political instability, poverty, declining economic performance and international debt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thunderstorms, due to their high frequency of occurrence over southern Africa and their dominant contribution to summer rainfall, are the primary focus of very short range forecasting and nowcasting efforts in South Africa. Most southern African countries are heavily reliant on satellite technology due to the limited number of surface and upper-air observations and the limited availability of numerical model output. In developing tools for the first 12 forecast hours, the South African Weather Service has to address both national and regional needs. The blending of techniques in an optimal manner is essential in achieving this. In this paper a description is given of how the Global Instability Index product derived from the European Meteosat Second Generation Satellite was adapted to fit to South African circumstances using a different numerical model as background information, creating the Regional Instability Indices (RII). The focus of the study is the development of a new convection indicator, called the Combined Instability Index (CII), which calculates the probability of convection based on satellite derived instability indices and moisture as well as orographic lift early in the morning when the sky is as cloud free as possible. The CII is an objective way for operational forecasters to calculate the probability for convection later in the day based on satellite and model data. Early morning CII values were evaluated statistically against the occurrence of lightning as well as against satellite derived precipitation later in the same day. It is shown that the CII not only performs well, but also outperforms the individual RII. The CII will be beneficial to operational forecasters to focus their attention on the area which is most favourable for the development of convection later in the day. Copyright © 2010 Royal Meteorological Society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study with rural young people (aged 10-24 years) in Malawi and Lesotho, focusing on their opportunities to learn skills and access capital and assets to engage in income-generating activities (IGAs). Participatory group exercises and individual interviews provide many examples of how young people learn skills and start small businesses, as well as an insight into their strategic thinking about engaging in these livelihood options. Various factors, including the effects of AIDS, are shown to affect young people's prospects of succeeding in their ventures. Young people are very keen on starting IGAs, and are supported by adult members of their communities in asking for interventions to help them. We argue that expanded vocational and business training, focusing on locally appropriate types and scale of businesses, coupled with help to raise start-up capital has the potential to improve the chances of young people who are poor and/or AIDS-affected securing sustainable rural livelihoods in their futures. Since AIDS is intertwined with many other issues affecting young people's livelihoods, it is problematic to single out and target only AIDS-affected young people with interventions on skills building and IGAs. Policymakers' attitudes to vocational skills training and support for IGAs in Malawi and Lesotho are also explored, and policy recommendations made to support vulnerable rural young people in their attempts to build sustainable livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity inventories are not yet complete, with potentially thousands of species unknown to science. This paper aims to (1) elucidate the historical discovery rate of endemic southern African marine fishes and (2) to estimate the number of potentially undescribed endemic marine fishes in the region using a statistical model and which factors (e.g. size/depth) contribute to unknown diversity. Thirdly, all species described globally for eight families (Blennidae, Clinidae, Gobiidae, Lutjanidae, Rajidae, Sciaenidae, Scyliorhinidae, Sparidae) were analysed to elucidate unknown diversity in these groups. The oceans of southern Africa, including Namibia, South Africa and Mozambique, encompassing sections of the south-eastern Atlantic Ocean and the western Indian Ocean. Literature surveys from a number of sources were carried out to compile lists of species descriptions from 1758 onwards. Species-accumulation curves were plotted for all endemic species, as well as for different components of size and depth. A maximum likelihood model was used to estimate the number of undescribed endemic marine fishes in southern Africa, as well as for all other categories, including global families. Fish discovery rates in southern Africa have varied with time. Estimates suggest that at least 25% of the total endemic fish fauna remain unknown and that size is the greatest predictor of whether a fish has been described. Smaller-sized fishes and those inhabiting shallow areas are most likely to be undersampled. It is likely that most undescribed fishes inhabit the subtropical/tropical waters of the east coast. At the current rate of fish description, it will take at least 50 years to describe the total endemic fish fauna. However, estimates of unknown species are probably higher because of cryptic species within currently recognized taxa. Climate change may also contribute to range expansions of marine species, further complicating the status of endemicity in southern African marine fishes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the influence of climate variability and change on the environment was studied over southern Africa using ground-based and remotely sensed data. A time series analysis of rainfall and temperature anomalies indicated that there was a high rainfall and temperature variability in the region. The influence of global teleconnections on rainfall patterns over southern Africa showed that in some areas there was a spatial variation in their strength, increasing from west to east. Maps of NDVI, from 1982 to 2004, showed that changes in vegetation cover were more apparent during the dry season than during the wet season. The study also revealed that climate variability and change are linked to decreasing rainfall and hence, decreasing regional water resources and biodiversity and increasing environmental degradation. With the regional population expected increase, this depletion of resources poses the greatest regional environmental challenge to humankind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil degradation assessments for mixed farming systems of the Molopo Basin (North West Province, South Africa and Southern District, Botswana) are provided from farmer–based research, designed to quantify nutrient fluxes across the farming system and to analyze the social, economic, political and environmental factors affecting nutrient management practices. This paper discusses the practical difficulties of how to use participatory farmer–led studies to assess soil degradation extent and its causes, and of then disseminating this information to farming communities and policymakers. Nutrient balance studies show that land degradation is evident on arable fields as soil nutrient depletion (the main threat to poorer manure–reliant farmers) and soil acidification (the main threat to wealthier farmers who have become dependent on inorganic fertilizer additions). Integrated nutrient management strategies involving both compound fertilizer additions and regular manure inputs can mitigate most soil degradation even on the sandy infertile Kalahari soils, but remain infrequently practised. The need to retain nutrient flows through the livestock sector from rangeland to arable land is thus vital to environmental sustainability and offers an applicable entry point for agricultural development initiatives and support. Factors identified as threatening the flow of nutrients from rangelands to arable lands include policy settings in terms of the different support programmes offered to communal farmers, village–level extension advice, household poverty levels and labour constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I draw on my findings and those of historical and recent Khoisan ethnography to attempt to explain how these southern African ‘Khoi’ and San peoples relate to wind and how the environmental phenomenon has informed their epistemology and ontology. I begin by fleshing out the knowledge and experience of wind among these past and recent hunter-gatherers and, pointing to continuity in wind relationships and the ideas that stem from them, I go on to demonstrate how wind weaves into Khoisan understandings of the body and illness. Despite extensive interest in Bushman healing, anthropologists have overwhelmingly concentrated on the ‘trance’ healing dance. My findings suggest this partiality has obscured the wider healing context in which the dance operates. Exploring the wider context, including massage, ‘medicinal cuts’, and witchcraft, reveals that the ‘potency’ conceived as central to the healing dance is, in certain contexts, equivalent to overlapping ideas of wind, arrows, and smell. Examination of the ethnography reveals that a number of the associations I make between wind and potency have been partially recognized in specific Khoisan contexts but, because comparative studies of Khoisan are difficult and unpopular, these similarities have gone largely unnoticed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]