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Executive Summary
socio-economic and environmental impacts are presented,
including the impact on human health, agriculture, water
resources and biodiversity.
Chapter 3 presents six transboundary issues of importance
to the Zambezi River Basin: ecosystems and protected
areas, water resources, movement of people, movement
of pollutants, fire outbreaks, and navigation. The key
components that constitute the environment such as plants,
animals, weather systems and people do not remain solely
within their national boundaries, and thus environmental
issues of mutual concern arising from a shared natural area,
resource, system, or migratory species become transboundary.
Neighbouring countries often face similar problems related
to the causes of environmental change in a shared natural
area and to the impacts on people and livelihoods. The
Zambezi River Basin has for the past years witnessed a
drastic change in its natural environment, mainly as a result
of climate change, urbanisation and increased demand
for agricultural land. These three major forces have caused
alarming rates of water pollution in transboundary water
resources, high loss of biodiversity and the drying up of
valuable wetland ecosystems. All of this impacts on the
wellbeing of people, wildlife and their environment.
Chapter 4 tracks Goal 7 on Environmental Sustainability,
of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),
with profiles of the eight riparian states of the Zambezi
River Basin. The objective of the Millennium Declaration
of 2000 was to promote a comprehensive approach
and a coordinated strategy, tackling many problems
simultaneously across a broad front, through the MDGs and
related targets and indicators.
Water resources form the basis of almost every aspect of
life in the Zambezi River Basin, including the sustenance of
human livelihoods and biodiversity. The resources drive the
socio-economic, political and cultural development of the
basin’s population. Apart from sustaining a rich diversity,
water resources are critical for meeting the basic needs for
domestic and industrial requirements, sanitation and waste
management, which are among the targets for Goal 7.
The need to effectively coordinate and manage water
resources has become a top priority in the Zambezi Basin
to promote sustainable utilisation of such critical resources.
Challenges of integrated and coordinated water resources
development, environmental management and sustainable
development, climate change adaptation, and the strategies
required to address these challenges underline the need for
stronger regional cooperation and closer integration in the
field of water management.
Chapter 5 presents the policies and strategies that have been
put in place to promote integrated resource management
among the Basin states. A number of initiatives and
activities have since been adopted to allow harmonisation,
transparency and accountability in the water resource
The Zambezi River Basin Atlas of the Changing Environment is
a basin collaborative initiative with the objective of providing
scientific evidence about changes that are taking place in the
natural resources and the environment. The Atlas, with climate
change as its running theme, is for use by policy makers and
other stakeholders, and the general public, to generate action
towards climate resilience through adaptation and mitigation
of the impacts of climate change.
The Atlas discusses the impacts that these changes are having
on the basin’s people and resources, thus contributing to the
documentation and study of the relationship between human
populations and the environment.
The Zambezi River Basin represents the best of what southern
Africa has in terms of shared natural capital. The river and
its dense network of tributaries and associated ecosystems
constitute one of southern Africa’s most important natural
resources. Within the Basin’s large expanse, there are a number
of natural resources ranging from water, land and soils, and
minerals, to forests and wildlife. The natural capital in the basin
defines the economic activities that range from agriculture
and forestry, manufacturing and mining, to conservation and
tourism, as well as scientific monitoring and research.
The Zambezi River Basin Atlas of the Changing Environment
contains five chapters. The chapters make use of satellite
images, maps, tables, graphs, photographs and illustrative text
to present the key issues in the Basin.
Chapter 1 presents the biophysical and socioeconomic
features of the Zambezi River Basin and sub-basins, and some
examples of the rich cultures, stretching across eight countries
– Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania,
Zambia and Zimbabwe.
As a transboundary resource that is subject to management
and use by various sectoral and national interests, the Zambezi
Basin is highly prone to overexploitation and unsustainable
short gains rather than long-term sustainable development.
Climate change coupled with human pressure on resources
has resulted in inevitable changes in the Basin’s environment.
Environmental change due to both natural and human activities
is continuous, and in some cases very dramatic.
Chapter 2 presents the socio-economic and environmental
changes taking place in the Zambezi River Basin. The causes of
these changes are not entirely the result of human activities in
the Basin, but are also as a result of activities that have occurred
elsewhere in the world, such as large-scale emissions of
greenhouse gases leading to climate change. Other causes include
increased population pressure on the land and its resources,
with associated processes of urbanisation, increased mining
and industrial activities, increased deforestation and wildfires.
The resultant environmental effects of the local and global
changes are presented in this chapter, including temperature
rise, and rise in sea level, leading to increased frequency and
severity of floods, droughts and cyclones. The associated