Thesis (doctoral)--Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Politik, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 237-246).

Thesis (MDF)--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / The Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Treaty aims at achieving regional integration, poverty alleviation and economic growth. Water is a catalyst to these aims, thus making it key for the region to manage and develop water resources. Water in the SADC region is a shared resource among the countries, making joint development of the resource important for peace and prosperity. SADC has been promoting transboundary water resources management among its member states. The region has done a lot of work in establishing an enabling environment for the management of water resources. The SADC Protocol for Shared Watercourses (the “Watercourses Protocol”), the Regional Water Policy (the “Water Policy”) and the Regional Water Strategy (the “Water Strategy”) are all instruments that have been developed to support the management of water resources. However, the region remains heavily under-developed in terms of water infrastructure and in order for the region to develop its water resources, the SADC secretariat has developed a Regional Strategic Water Infrastructure Development Programme (referred to as the “SADC Programme for water infrastructure development” in this study). The Programme is aimed at responding to the lack of infrastructural development in the region and identifies regional water projects to be implemented. Water is a sector that struggles in attracting private sector funding and involvement. This study aims to look into ways that the private sector can been attracted to participate in the Programme for water infrastructure development and also proposes ways they can be engaged. Private-sector involvement varies from project identification to project implementation and funding. To attract the private sector to participate in the SADC Programme for water infrastructure development, SADC and the member states have to build on the enabling environment established in the region and also on relationships based on existing institutions. The private sector needs to be assured of good market potential and sound financial returns. This can be achieved if the region better co-ordinates the prioritization of regional projects through integrated planning. NEPAD and SADC working closely together, to issue that a consistent development agenda is communicated to potential investors, could add value and avoid duplication. It is also important to link to national development priorities in order to ensure that local issues are addressed. Capacity of the public sector to support regional projects is also important – capacity to develop bankable projects, develop financing mechanisms and to implement the projects is required at all levels. The SADC region lacks capacity to participate in complex infrastructure projects and this has to be addressed through establishing a Private Public Partnership Unit at the SADC Secretariat. Capacity to also manage and regulate water services is lacking in a number of countries in the region. These are important issues to ensure fair pricing and to give the private sector confidence on issues of tariff setting. To attract private funding into the water sector the region needs to develop innovative financing mechanisms in order to leverage market-based repayable finance. In the implementation of the SADC Programme for water infrastructure development there is a need to evaluate various types of innovative financial instruments and assess their potential use for regional water projects. Local capital markets in a number of the countries are weak, therefore the implementation of the SADC Protocol on Finance and Investment (the “Finance Protocol”) is important in strengthening these markets. Political will and good governance within member states are also important in attracting investors. SADC as the promoter of infrastructure policies in the region should play a proactive role in encouraging its member states to observe the rule of law and also to use existing treaties within SADC to ensure countries do so. Poor governance and unstable economies are a disincentive for private sector involvement.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the nature and characteristics of tropospheric ozone over Johannesburg, South Africa. Ozone, water vapour and meteorological profile data, which form part of the MOZAIC (Measurement of Ozone and Water Vapor by Airbus In-Service Aircraft) database for the period 1995 to 2000 were utilized in this study. The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first part deals with the computation of total tropospheric ozone. A clear seasonal cycle, with ozone peaking in September and October is found. It is suggested that the main reason for the spring maximum is biomass burning, combined with prevailing anticyclonic circulation patterns, which facilitate the build-up of ozone over the region. Variability in TTO is greatest in January, September and November and least during autumn and winter (April to July). The lower day-to-day variability in autumn and winter is a reflection of the more settled weather at this time. Interannual variability is least in January and April to June. The autumn and winter ozone values are more consistent and appear to represent background tropospheric ozone loadings on which the dynamic and photochemical influences of other months are superimposed. High TTO events (>30 DU) occurred predominantly during September and October. Enhancements in the lower troposphere occurred mostly in September and seldom lasted for more than 1-2 consecutive days. It is suggested that these events are most likely due to effects of local surface pollution sources, either localised biomass burning or urban-industrial effects. An extended period of enhancement in the 7-12 km layer occurred from 14-17 September 1998 and again on 20 September 1998. The extended duration of this event suggests that it is due to an STE event. Confirmation of this was given in a case study of a particular MOZAIC flight on 16 September 1998 from Johannesburg to Cape Town. The second part of the thesis deals with the classification of ozone profiles and is used to find pattern and order within the profiles. TWINSPAN (Two-Way INdicator SPecies ANalysis), a cluster analysis technique, was used to classify the profiles according to the magnitude and altitude of ozone concentration. Six distinct groups of profiles have been identified and their characteristics described. The HYSPLIT (Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory) trajectory model was used to relate the profiles to the origin of air masses, revealing clearly defined source regions. The mid-tropospheric peak in summer and the low to mid-tropospheric enhancement in spring is attributed to continental areas over central Africa and long-range transport while local sources are responsible for the winter low tropospheric enhancement. Reduced ozone values are due to westerlies bringing in clean maritime air. The classification has highlighted three important findings. Firstly, it has emphasized the pronounced seasonality of ozone profiles. It is evident that seasons are dominated by particular patterns and by inference, the processes and transport patterns that shape individual profiles are seasonally dependent. Secondly, the widely recognized spring maximum in tropospheric ozone has been confirmed in this classification, but a new and equally high summer mid-tropospheric enhancement due to the penetration of tropical air masses from continental regions in central Africa has been identified. Thirdly, it is suggested that the computation of a mean profile and furthermore, extrapolation of trends based on a mean profile is meaningless, particularly for a location on the boundaries of zonally defined meteorological regimes. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

From Preface: A preliminary survey of the history of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in the Transvaal revealed that the period of the early missions, before the formation of the Transvaal and Swaziland District, required research into the documents of other Districts for the purpose of writing a detailed history. It was therefore decided to confine research to the Documents of the Transvaal and Swaziland District and to write introductory chapters on the period of the early missions. The detailed research for this dissertation begins, therefore, with the creation of the Transvaal and Swaziland District in 1880. The natural point at which to finish appeared, at first, to be the beginning of the Second Transvaal War of Independence, but further research indicated that it would be more useful to conclude with the end of the war in 1902.

No abstract available / Thesis (MA)--PU vir CHO

The complex and coupled physical processes taking place in the atmosphere, ocean and land surface are described in Global Circulation Models (GCMs). These models have become the main tools to simulate climate variability and project future climate change. GCMs have the potential to give physically reliable estimates of climate change at global, continental or regional scales, but their projections are currently of too course horizontal resolution to capture the smaller scale features of climate and climate change. This situation stems from the fact that GCM simulations, which are effectively three-dimensional simulations of the coupled atmosphere-ocean-land system, are computationally extremely expensive. Therefore, downscaling techniques are utilised to do perform simulations over preselected areas that are of sufficiently detailed to represent the climate features at the meso-scale. Dynamic regional climate models (RCMs), based on the same laws of physics as GCMs but applied at high resolution over areas of interest, have become the main tools to project regional climate change. The research presented here utilises the Conformal-Cubic Atmospheric Model (CCAM), a variable-resolution global atmospheric model that can be applied in stretched-grid mode to function as a regional climate model. As is the case with RCMs, CCAM has the potential to improve climate simulations along rough topography and coastal areas when applied at high spatial resolution, whilst side-stepping the lateral boundary condition problems experienced by typical limited-area RCMs. CCAM has been developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia. The objective in the study is to test capability of a regional climate model, CCAM, to realistically simulate cumulus convection at different spatial scales over regions with steep topography, such as the eastern escarpment of South Africa. Since both GCMs and RCMs are known to have large biases and shortcomings in simulating rainfall over the steep eastern escarpment of southern Africa and in particular Lesotho, the paper “Model simulations of rainfall over southern Africa and its eastern escarpment” (Chapter 3) has a focus on verifying model performance over this region. In the paper the CCAM simulations include six 200 km resolution Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) simulations that are forced with sea surface temperatures and one 50 km resolution National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis simulation that is forced with sea surface temperatures and synoptic scale atmospheric forcings. These simulations are verified against rain gauge data sets and satellite rainfall estimates. The results reveal that at these resolutions the model is capable of simulating the key synoptic-scale features of southern African rainfall patterns. However, rainfall totals are often drastically overestimated. A key aspect of model performance is the representation of the diurnal cycle in convection. For the case of South Africa, the realistic representation of the complex patterns of rainfall over regions of steep topography is also of particular importance. At a larger spatial scale, the model also needs to be capable of representing the west-east rainfall gradient found over South Africa. The ability of CCAM to simulate the diurnal cycle in rainfall as well as the complex spatial patterns of rainfall over eastern South Africa is analysed in “High Resolution Rainfall Modelling over the Eastern Escarpment of South Africa” (Chapter 4). The simulations described in the paper have been performed at 8km resolutions in the horizontal and span a thirty-year long period. These are the highest resolution climate simulations obtained to date for the southern African region, and were obtained through the downscaling reanalysis data of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF). The simulations provide a test of the robustness of the CCAM convective rainfall parameterisations when applied at high spatial resolution, in particular in representing the complex rainfall patterns of the eastern escarpment of South Africa. / M (Geography and Environmental Management), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

No abstract available / Thesis (MA)--PU vir CHO

The complex and coupled physical processes taking place in the atmosphere, ocean and land surface are described in Global Circulation Models (GCMs). These models have become the main tools to simulate climate variability and project future climate change. GCMs have the potential to give physically reliable estimates of climate change at global, continental or regional scales, but their projections are currently of too course horizontal resolution to capture the smaller scale features of climate and climate change. This situation stems from the fact that GCM simulations, which are effectively three-dimensional simulations of the coupled atmosphere-ocean-land system, are computationally extremely expensive. Therefore, downscaling techniques are utilised to do perform simulations over preselected areas that are of sufficiently detailed to represent the climate features at the meso-scale. Dynamic regional climate models (RCMs), based on the same laws of physics as GCMs but applied at high resolution over areas of interest, have become the main tools to project regional climate change. The research presented here utilises the Conformal-Cubic Atmospheric Model (CCAM), a variable-resolution global atmospheric model that can be applied in stretched-grid mode to function as a regional climate model. As is the case with RCMs, CCAM has the potential to improve climate simulations along rough topography and coastal areas when applied at high spatial resolution, whilst side-stepping the lateral boundary condition problems experienced by typical limited-area RCMs. CCAM has been developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia. The objective in the study is to test capability of a regional climate model, CCAM, to realistically simulate cumulus convection at different spatial scales over regions with steep topography, such as the eastern escarpment of South Africa. Since both GCMs and RCMs are known to have large biases and shortcomings in simulating rainfall over the steep eastern escarpment of southern Africa and in particular Lesotho, the paper “Model simulations of rainfall over southern Africa and its eastern escarpment” (Chapter 3) has a focus on verifying model performance over this region. In the paper the CCAM simulations include six 200 km resolution Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) simulations that are forced with sea surface temperatures and one 50 km resolution National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis simulation that is forced with sea surface temperatures and synoptic scale atmospheric forcings. These simulations are verified against rain gauge data sets and satellite rainfall estimates. The results reveal that at these resolutions the model is capable of simulating the key synoptic-scale features of southern African rainfall patterns. However, rainfall totals are often drastically overestimated. A key aspect of model performance is the representation of the diurnal cycle in convection. For the case of South Africa, the realistic representation of the complex patterns of rainfall over regions of steep topography is also of particular importance. At a larger spatial scale, the model also needs to be capable of representing the west-east rainfall gradient found over South Africa. The ability of CCAM to simulate the diurnal cycle in rainfall as well as the complex spatial patterns of rainfall over eastern South Africa is analysed in “High Resolution Rainfall Modelling over the Eastern Escarpment of South Africa” (Chapter 4). The simulations described in the paper have been performed at 8km resolutions in the horizontal and span a thirty-year long period. These are the highest resolution climate simulations obtained to date for the southern African region, and were obtained through the downscaling reanalysis data of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF). The simulations provide a test of the robustness of the CCAM convective rainfall parameterisations when applied at high spatial resolution, in particular in representing the complex rainfall patterns of the eastern escarpment of South Africa. / M (Geography and Environmental Management), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

No abstract available / SYS THEOLOGY & THEOL ETHICS / DTH (SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY)

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2011. / The purpose of the study is to investigate the feasibility and sustainability of producing biodiesel from Jatropha, which contains oil in its seeds by using the Rainbow Biotech economic intervention or also known as the Distributed Food and Fuel Plantation (DFFP) model. The DFFP model is an effective mechanism for producing food and fuel in conjunction with each other, without the biodiesel production influencing the production of food in an adverse way. This is very important, as food security is a high priority for Africa, in order to address the problem of hunger and poverty. Biodiesel produced from Jatropha is an eco-friendly and sustainable alternative to fossil fuel diesel, as it is a carbon neutral fuel. Jatropha cultivation will also create much needed employment in the rural areas of Africa, which has the highest need for socio-economic development on the continent. Jatropha also has the ability to grow on marginal soils and wastelands. Africa has vast open spaces on which Jatropha, as a biodiesel source, can be cultivated without infringing on food production areas. The energy return of the whole production cycle of Jatropha biodiesel is nevertheless a source of much debate. Most stakeholders felt that the energy return is negative. No agreement has yet been reached about whether the energy content of the by-products from biodiesel must be included in the integrated energy balance equation. In order to make biodiesel from Jatropha a sustainable alternative for small farmers in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), government and regional policies will have to support it by promoting it actively. This will generate interest from global biodiesel investors who will then be willing to invest in projects based on the DFFP model of economic development. The DFFP model offers investors economic returns on investment of between 29 and 33 per cent and payback periods of less than four years. It is a very attractive economic development instrument, as it will ensure equitable and sustainable economic and rural expansion in SADC. Ultimately, this model has the potential to create a better life for all the inhabitants on the African continent. Rainbow Biotech (the DFFP model), as an economic development mechanism, will therefore indeed be the next big thing for the SADC in the future.