BuaNews (Tshwane)
Nozipho Dlamini
16 February 2006
South Africa is developing an Air Quality Information System to provide accurate, current, relevant and complete information for informed air quality decision-making.
Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said this today.
He was speaking at the opening of the 14th session of the Commission for Atmospheric Sciences (CAS) of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in Cape Town.
According to the minister, the system will be located within the South African Weather Service as the institution best placed to assume this monitoring role, and are conducting a feasibility study to determine the modalities that this will entail.
Government will also be announcing for public comment, before the end of March, the first set of ambient air quality standards for South Africa and the first "controlled emitter" in terms of the new Air Quality Act.
This will address for example unacceptable concentrations of cancer-causing pollutants that had been measured in and around the country's industrial centres, costing South Africa more than R4 billion on respiratory health problems related to air pollution.
"Every winter our people cough and choke from breathing a vile cocktail of airborne pollution that remains trapped under temperature inversion layers," he said.
Talking about climate change, he said South Africa had placed the national response to climate change at the forefront of its governance priorities.
"As a developing country we believe in the importance of a future framework for action on climate change that is marked by a balance between adaptation and mitigation," he said.
"We are very aware of the need to deal with the unintended consequences of climate change mitigation measures taken by developed countries on the economies of some developing countries."
In this regard, he said this would require concerted international support for the diversification of the economies of those countries affected, to ensure that climate change action was aligned with sustainable development objectives.
He said 2006 had been declared International Year of Deserts and Desertification.
Desertification "is one of the world's most alarming processes of environmental degradation, affecting one third of the earth's surface, more than 4 billion hectares, and over a billion people.
Moreover, it has potentially devastating social and economic costs.
Furthermore, Mr Van Schalkwyk said in order to have a truly global value; meteorology ought to make a real difference to the everyday lives of people across the globe.
According to him, it was not enough to only invest in monitoring and research capacity on climate change but to project impacts for different sectors and support the development of robust climate change adaptation strategies.
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