The reporting framework
As was the case in the 2002 NW Province SoER, this report is based on a modification of the Drivers-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) model for state of the environment reporting, developed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in the early 1990s, and adapted by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in 1995.
The DPSIR framework is a model which establishes a cause and effect relationship between human activities and the impacts exerted by such activities on the environment (Figure 1). Responses to the impacts are formulated and interventions are then made in the cause and effect relationship to enhance the positive impacts and reduce the negative impacts (Goslar et al. 2008).
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Report outline
- Part I & II (Chapters 1 and 2) introduces the NW Province, deals with the concept of sustainability and describes the context within which the Outlook is written. It also describes the challenges associated with the socio-economic needs of the Province, and outlines, in broad terms, how economic activities impact on the environment and the drivers[3] of environmental change;
- Part III (Chapters 3 to 8) investigates the state of each environmental component or theme, as well as how these are governed;
- Part IV (Chapter 9) evaluates the trends presented in the preceding chapters, and extrapolates the information in the form of scenarios. Based on the two main drivers (governance and economy), attempts are made to predict what the NW Province could reasonably be expected to look like in 2025, and
- Part V (Chapter 10) provides a broad discussion on the conditions and options that may require attention in order to slow, halt, or reverse social and environmental degradation in response to the identified scenarios.
Figure 2 illustrates the manner in which the report outline has been structured, in accordance with the DPSIR Model.
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