Zambezi River Basin

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

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