Why do all the elements on a page not print when I select the print option in Microsoft Internet Explorer?
There are several reasons why this report exists. Firstly, the National Environmental Management Act (Act 107 of 1998) states that people have the right to information about the state of the environment. Secondly, Chapter 40 of Agenda 21, which deals with Environmental Information, recommends that countries should make environmental information more accessible to citizens. It also recommends that state of the environment reports be compiled on a regular basis. Thirdly, decision makers increasingly need good quality, relevant, up to date information on the environment to assist in decision-making. A state of the environment report is one tool that can provide such information.
A small team of four people in the Directorate Environmental Information and Reporting of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism created this Internet report from contributions by experts. More information on the process followed is available here.
This internet version of the report has been produced by the Department of Environmental Affairs & Tourism in close collaboration with GRID-Arendal - the Global Resource Information Database in Arendal, Norway, and over 20 research institutions and specialist consultants in southern Africa. The project was funded by the Norwegian Research and Development Agency (NORAD) and by DEA&T . Internet software and training were provided by GRID-Arendal and Ugland Publikit in Norway. The project was managed by the CSIR Division of Water, Environment & Forestry Technology.
The report is the result of an extensive consultation process, with inputs invited from more than 200 stakeholders, and comments invited from the general public. The issues were agreed upon as being the most important current environmental issues in South Africa at present, by a wide range of stakeholders and specialists in the natural, social, economic, and political environments. Information regarding each of these issues was gathered and interpreted by specialists in the relevant fields. This information forms the seven sections on which this report is built. Summary information from these sections has been organised into an overview designed to provide easy access to the issue and related information.
The site map can be found here.
We plan to update this report on a continuous basis. One of the benefits of having the State of the Environment report on the Internet is that it is relatively easy to update information in the report. We will also add new sections so that the report will be truly dynamic rather than static. We hope to have database connectivity soon which will also make it easier to update information in the report.
Source material is available from the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. Write to:
Directorate Environmental Information and Reporting
Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
Private Bag X447
Pretoria
South Africa
0001
Yes. Apart from the report on the Internet, the State of the Environment Report is also available on CD. We also have a synthesised overview in printed format in English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa and Tswana. Copies of the CD and the overview can be obtained by writing to the address below. If you would like to have a copy of the overview, please state your language preference:
Directorate Environmental Information and Reporting
Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
Private Bag X447
Pretoria
South Africa
0001
Alternatively, you can request the CD or the printed report by sending us an E-mail or fill in the form below.
A full list of contact names and addresses for the national and Provincial environmental departments can be found here.
A complete list of all conventions with some background information and dates can be found here
Apart from the short section on environmental rights contained in this report, the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism has also produced a comprehensive document on environmental rights as contained in the National Environmental Management Act. This document is available from the address below:
Directorate Environmental Information and Reporting
Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
Private Bag X447
Pretoria
South Africa
0001
Texts and graphics may be copied to single papers on condition that credit is given to the source.
If you wish to use parts of the SoE report for your own printing/publishing or use the photos/graphics for your own web-pages, please contact DEA&T for a separate agreement.
Navigate by using the menu at the top, the left and right and up arrows (when provided) or the menu in the text. Click on the item of your choice on any of the menus. More information on navigation with screen shots are available here.
To see the full list of indicators used in this report, click here
Information on the accuracy of the data used in this report can be obtained here
The National State of the Environment Report was developed in conjunction with four metropolitan State of the Environment Reports as well as an international initiative to develop city state of the environment reports. One of the objectives of this initiative is to be able to compare environmental issues across cities or countries. It was therefore necessary to develop a Web Site with a folder structure that would enable such comparisons to be made. Ugland Publikitt and GRID-Arendal developed a tool to enable cities to develop state of the environment reports on the Internet. The tool called Publikit constructs the necessary folder structure to allow for future comparisons between cities on selected issues. We have used the Beta version of Publikit to construct the folder structure of the web site. Publikit has a HTML editor based on the FrontPage engine. HTML coding was done using HotDog 5.5 and HomeSite 4.0.
Most of the pages on this site use cascading style sheets to control elements on the Web page. While elements such as menus, multimedia and animated GIF makes good sense on the Internet, they often do not serve any purpose on the printed document. The best web pages for screen display often make the worst web pages for print. All pages on this site have been designed not to print unnecessary elements when the output is sent through to a printer. For example, the background does not print in IE4. This makes the printed version visually different to the screen version and more suited to the printed format. Unfortunately, this function is currently only available in Microsoft Internet Explorer 4. If you print a page from Netscape Navigator, all elements will print. If you are interested in the CSS-print specification, it is available on-line at http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-print.