Safeguarding the globe or basic well-being? Global environmental change issues and southern Africa

bibliographic database
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Book chapter

Title:	Safeguarding the globe or basic well-being? Global environmental change issues and southern Africa
Author:	Chanda, Raban
Book title:	Globalization, democracy and development in Africa: challenges and prospects
Year:	2001
Pages:	245-262
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Southern Africa
Subjects:	environmental policy climate change environment
Abstract:	Plausible evidence is emerging indicating that the global environment is experiencing negative changes and that human activities, mostly concentrated in Northern countries, are the principal driving force. Southern countries, such as those in the SADC region, are responsible mostly for localized, basic livelihood-related environmental degradation such as erosion of biodiversity, desertification and depletion of renewable natural resources. The policy challenge for these countries in the short term is how to pursue economic growth and poverty alleviating development while keeping environmental protection in view. The prevalence of national poverty and indebtedness in southern Africa is likely to sustain the discrepancy between environmental awareness and appropriate policy adoption, on the one hand, and practical policy implementation on the other. Environmental protection strategies likely to succeed are those demonstrably linked to poverty abatement, such as the community-based natural resource management policies being fostered in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Bibliogr. [ASC Leiden abstract]