This study addresses the problem of predicting suitable burning weather for the south-western Cape Province by means of synoptic analysis. Weather which is suitable for veld burning is defined in terms of maximum hourly windspeed (< 16 km/hr), maximum daily temperature (18° - 28°C) and minimum daily humidity (15 - 45%). Synoptic conditions which are associated with favourable burning weather are outlined. Burning weather in the study area was found to be associated with weak anticyclonic air flow. The pressure configuration which gives rise to the required anticyclonic flow consists of a high pressure cell over the eastern part of the subcontinent, a trough of low pressure along the north-western interior and the location of the climatological high pressure system of the South Atlantic Ocean to the south-west of the subcontinent. A model five-day sequence of pressure charts was developed for use as an analogue consultation system for predicting burning weather. During a test application of the model five-day sequence it could be shown that the system is useful for alerting catchment managers three days in advance, when to expect weather suitable for controlled burning.

Environmental education. It interpretation is a field of non-formal has evolved largely this century as an aid in visitor resource management and the conservation of places of natural or cultural interest. Interpretation establishes channels of communication between visitors and the agencies which manage these attractions. Through these contacts information can be presented to enhance the visitor experience. In addition messages can be conveyed to direct visitor impact or achieve other management objectives which require communication between the controlling authority and the visiting public. Interpretation today is recognised to be a blending of two streams of historical development (Aldridge, 1989; Phillips, 1989). The first emerged in the early years of the United States National Park Service (Tilden, 1977). It was here that information officers began to realise that their work called for much more than simply the provision of information on a particular area or deeper awareness; cultural/historical asset. A of caring and responsibility sense of for the resource, had to be engendered in visitors to ensure that the parks were utilised properly, as well as promote public support for their continued conservation.

Globally, floods are viewed as the most destructive of all naturally triggered disasters. This is indicated by reported flood losses that exceed one third of the estimated total cost associated with all disaster events triggered by natural hazards. Additionally, flood events account for two thirds of the global population affected by all naturally triggered disaster events.

Coastal areas are important as they contain a disproportionately large share of global urban areas; industrial activities; pollution sources; food production; tourism; biodiversity and poverty (Olsen, 1993: 201 ). Throughout much of the world, these areas face considerable population and development pressures. The world's population is projected to grow exponentially from 4.1 billion in 1990 to 6.2 billion by the year 2000. Currently, more than 50% of the world's population lives within 60 kms of the coastline (World Bank, 1993a: 4). A concern resulting from these pressures is degradation of coastal resources. The degrading condition of the coastal resources raises concerns as to the long-term capacity of coastal ecosystems to provide for sustainable development (Olsen, 1993: 20 I). Thus industries that are highly dependent on coastal resources, such as tourism, are particularly vulnerable.

Land degradation in drylands, remains a highly contentious issue. Broadly speaking, land degradation may be defined as undesirable changes in the state of land from productive to unproductive due to natural or human made factors

The purpose of this dissertation is to prove that there are urban forms that are appropriate to the desert environment, and that such forms together with basic design principles, can provide substantive design-oriented steps towards the environmental goal of sustainability in an urban context. The term "sustainability" has often been applied at a global level and is a holistic concept that tries to find solutions to a number of global issues. However, many of these problems are highly visible at an urban level, whereby the year 2000 over 50% of the world population is expected to manifest itself in urban areas. Sustainability therefore needs to be addressed at an urban level, a level which is closer to the people who both consume the most resources and produce the most waste. Among the many strategies available for addressing sustainability at a number of levels, sustainability as reflected in city design has played a small role. The stark reality that our living environments influence our daily activities and consumption patterns, and that these have been reflected in an unsustainable manner in many western settlements due to the physical layout of settlements, needs to be addressed. The planning system (with design as both a component· thereof and a result of the planning process) has a major role to play in addressing issues of sustainability from a physical perspective. Much research has been done on urban sustainability and urban form in the European context and is still developing. However, little research has been undertaken on the issues of urban sustainability in arid zones. Arid zones can be considered as the last frontiers of urban and rural expansion, and the prevailing trends of the last 30 years have indicated that these areas are experiencing rapid urbanisation. Due to extreme climatic conditions, it would be expected that these settlements. would develop within the constraints and opportunities such environments present. However, contemporary desert settlements have been founded on planning principles and standards adopted from other regions that are not arid in nature. This has resulted in settlements being inappropriate for their environments. Determining what is appropriate is rather difficult, especially from a physical perspective and could be perceived as very static. A proposition was therefore made to determine whether or not a sustainable urban form for desert environments existed, and whether there were specific design principles for desert settlements. This was intended to produce basic guidelines, which could then be used to facilitate discussion. The development of a coastal zone management plan (CZMP) for the Erongo region in Namibia, provided the opportunity to investigate the proposition. The CZMP required that a variety of issues (biophysical, infrastructural, legal, social, institutional, etc.) be investigated and presented in a baseline report. This baseline report highlighted a number of urban problems (such as urban sprawl, high infrastructural costs, and accessibility problems), which. need to be addressed by the coastal zone management plan. Walvis Bay, a settlement within the CZMP area, and a settlement in an arid zone (namely within the coastal area of the Namib Desert) proved to be an interesting case study, one that could be used to verify the proposition. Urban sustainability, urban morphology and urban design are discussed in detail in this dissertation, in order to present the theoretical tenets with which urban forms can be analysed, and from which an appropriate urban form can be developed for arid zones. Various tenets and principles of sustainability are addressed, and principles pertaining to sustainable design are outlined. Of notable significance is the fact that human design interacts with the natural world. A relationship can therefore be said to exist between the natural and human environments. Urban morphology is presented as a basis for illustrating that settlements develop from a number of influencing factors. Furthermore, the discussion of urban morphology also reveals the agendas which shape settlements, thereby giving certain settlements particular forms. The contempary debate between the respective merits of sprawling and compact settlements, raises a number of implications for sustainability. However, this dissertation proposes that the adoption of a compact settlement could achieve the means of sustainability better. The discussion of urban design emphasises the relationship between the built and natural environments, while at the same time presenting vital attributes that all settlements should either have or strive towards. Empirical research on urban settlements in the desert environments of Israel, Australia and the United States, and research on ancient and Arabic settlements in general, highlights design principles that could enhance the sustainability of settlements in desert environments. From many of the older settlements in the middle east, valuable lessons can be learnt regarding urban form in desert environments, lessons which are still applicable today. Walvis Bay's urban environment is analysed through an understanding of the basic performance dimensions inherent in urban forms, as well as urban form patterns and elements, sustainability principles and the vital attributes that urban environments should have. From this analysis, it becomes clear that certain urban forms are more suitable for desert environments, and that, as a consequence of an inappropriate urban form, Walvis Bay is unsustainable. By combining design principles of the Arabic settlements with aspects of a compact settlement, an appropriate urban form can be achieved. The attainment of a sustainable urban form (and one that encompasses the concept of "liveability") can be achieved for Walvis Bay, through the concrete suggestions made through this dissertation's analysis. This dissertation is a facilitating study, proceeding largely by a review of the existing literature on the subject. This "literature review", together with an analysis of Walvis Bay, is intended to present design principles for a sustainable urban form for desert environments.

The following research explores the intersection of environmental racism and conservation in literature affiliated with the University of Cape Town, through the means of a systematic review. This systematic review is contextualised by not only the socio-economy of Cape Town and the greater South Africa, but also the self-positioning of UCT as an ‘anchor institution' that is impactful, though its research, on the wider community. The research sorts a total of 81 publications into nine themes, timeboxed by the past 10 years. This study is limited only to peer-reviewed journal articles published in English, in established journals. The results indicate growth in the number of publications on these topics over the decade, with the most being published in 2018, 2019, and 2020, and uncovered that the publications offer a significant amount of critique on the environmental governance in the global south, and in South Africa specifically. Through a deep analysis, this research identifies trends across publications, from the year of publication, the current events at the time of writing, and the range that the various authors explore. The study shows that there is a lack of publications on the implementation of the proposed solutions or strategies that tackle the deeply complex issue of eradicating racism, and building a sustainable future for everyone, particularly in the developing world. This research provides a comprehensive review of affiliated literature with UCT on these topics, while identifying gaps in the publications. It identifies spaces where, if time and resources became available, UCT could collaborate and help implement strategies and policies, above and beyond research and recommendations.

The coastal zone is the dynamic interface between land and sea and is under immense threat from increasing coastal population and development trends as well as global climate change. Given global and regional sea level rise projections, coastal African countries including South African are highly exposed to climate risks, namely storm surges, flooding and coastal erosion, which particularly impact socio-ecological systems at the local level. The aim of this study is to examine the various technical responses and governance approaches employed by government to address coastal risk along the Langebaan shoreline – a coastal town located in the Western Cape, renowned for its tourism, recreation and scenic attributes. However, the Langebaan shoreline is increasingly at-risk from climate-related sea level rise, compounded by inappropriate coastal development. This research suggests measures to strengthen coastal risk governance (CRG) through exploring stakeholder interpretation of coastal risk as well as understanding the barriers to addressing coastal risk in the context of the Saldanha Bay Municipality (SBM). This study was informed by a review of the legal framework governing coastal risk in South Africa as well as the various technical reports pertaining to addressing coastal erosion in Langebaan. Primary data collection was undertaken through semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest that coastal erosion along the Langebaan shoreline is a complex and multi-faceted human-environmental issue. Furthermore, various reactive steps have been taken in response to Langebaan's eroding shoreline since the 1997 storm, these included hard and soft engineering measures as well as managed retreat. However, the Saldanha Bay Municipality (SBM) remain crippled by lack of institutional capacity and resources to tackle environmental issues like coastal erosion. Therefore, strengthening coastal risk governance (CRG) in under-resourced municipalities like the Saldanha Bay Municipality (SBM) requires improved communication and coordination across all levels of government and with civil society, which in turn will promote long-term strategic thinking and innovative and collective action.

Sparse information about the wind climate of South Africa behooves an exploration of the drivers of surface wind speed, especially in the context of wind resource assessment. This work quantifies the coupling between the synoptic circulation states and station-scale flows to develop a process-based regionalisation of wind regimes over the country .A thorough inspection of available South African Weather Service (SAWS) wind records is conducted and a quality control procedure is applied. The procedure reveals a large proportion of the data are missing and existing data contain numerous errors such that only107 of the original 960 stations passed the quality control criteria. However, data from these107 stations only overlap temporally 2% of the time, which makes the data inappropriate fora regionalisation procedure. To ameliorate this, a method for incorporating bias-corrected time series data from a reanalysis data set is developed. Data from the 0.3◦ resolution hourly Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) be-tween 1989-2010 is selected to improve the temporal coverage of the station data. The raw CFSR data overestimates wind speeds and underestimates the temporal variability and long-term trends. A bias correction method based on the wind speed and direction, time of day and month of the year is developed which successfully removes the mean error on wind speed and direction and improves the correlation with station records. This is achieved without disrupting spatial correlation patterns. Corrected and extended wind time series from each station site are used for the regionalisation. The regionalisation uses a self-organising map (SOM) to define the archetypal synoptic circulation patterns in the reanalysis data set and the influence of these on the local wind climate is quantified. 12 representative atmospheric states are defined by the SOM that are consistent with the existing literature and capture the major synoptic circulation states. A hierarchical clustering is then used to define wind climate regions based on the coupling between these circulation states and the extended station data. Six relatively cohesive spatial wind-climate groupings are identified that are physically consistent with the driving synoptic environment and are characteristic in terms of terrain and response to synoptic drivers. This process-based regionalisation facilitates a future assessment of potential changes in the wind climate of South Africa as a result of a warming world.

Includes bibliographical references / The main aim of this thesis is to investigate the potential benefits of increasing resolution in regional climate models in the simulation of climate variability and change over East Africa. This study is based on two high resolution regional climate simulations with a horizontal resolution of 50km and 10km, respectively. These represent present day climate and a projection of future climate change over East Africa. The regional climate model (RCM) used here is HIRHAM5, which is driven by the global circulation model (ECHAM5). Downscaled ECHAM5 output is used to drive the 50km HIRHAM5 simulation for the period 1950-2100, and output from this simulation is used to drive the 10km simulation for three time slices: 1980-1999, representative for present-day climate and two time slices for near future (2046-2065) and far future (2080- 2099), respectively. HIRHAM5 is evaluated with respect to the observed mean climatologies of rainfall, surface temperature and surface winds over East Africa, and representations of the observed annual cycles and inter-annual variability of rainfall and surface temperature. This study utilizes reanalysis and observational datasets: a hindcast of HIRHAM5 forced with ERA Interim, as well as two observation datasets for temperature and rainfall. Since reanalyses aim to make "best use" of all available observations by making a physically consistent representation continuous in time and space, and since there is a paucity of observations over many parts of Africa, the ERAI reanalysis is also used as a best estimate for model evaluation. Additionally, for evaluation of the bimodal nature of East Africa's rainfall, especially over Tanzania, three stations run by the Tanzania Meteorological Agency were used. The model data used in th is evaluation ranges from 1980 to 2006 iv HIRHAM5 demonstrates reasonable skill in the reproduction of observed patterns of mean climatology of rainfall, surface temperature and winds over East Africa. Moreover, the patterns of annual cycles of rainfall and surface temperature in the bimodal nature of East Africa are well represented. Furthermore, the model showed reasonable skill in the representation of the inter- annual variability and ENSO signals as suggested by the observation. Despite these strengths, HIRHAM5 shows some shortcomings. One weakness of the model is the simulation of the magnitude of a given variable over a specific region. For example, HIRHAM5 driven by ERAI underestimates rainfall and overestimates surface temperature over the entire domain of East Africa. The higher resolution HIRHAM5 (10km resolution) overestimates rainfall over high ground. The model bias could be due in part to the inadequacy of the observation networks in East Africa, represented in this thesis by the CRU and FEWS datasets. However, these two datasets draw on some different sources and neither do they have the same resolution. FEWS is a high resolution data (0.1 o ) gridded satellite-derived precipitation estimate covering the entire African continent while CRU datasets is a relatively low resolution (0.5 o ) dataset based on rain gauge monthly precipitation only; in addition , near surface temperature is also available. As no reliable wind observations exist, wind data was taken from the ERA-Interim reanalysis. The different observational datasets do not agree particularly well, which impedes evaluating the quality of the HIRHAM5 simulations, in particular the high resolution one. So while the higher resolution HIRHAM5 appears to be generally reliable, caution must be exercised in formulating conclusions from the results, especially over high ground and remote areas without adequate observation data. Under these constraints, the results suggest HIRHAM5 may be useful for assessing climate variability and change over East Africa. A weakness of the analysis presented here is that only one combination of GCM and RCM could be investigated in depth due to computer and time constraints. Therefore the results presented here, if used in application for climate change adaptation, should be considered in conjunction with a broader suite of data, such from the CORDEX programme. This has potential to increase the reliability of information about climate variability and change at a regional to local level necessary for impact assessment.