The Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land-Management (SASSCAL) is a joint initiative of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Germany, responding to the challenges of global change.
The current processes of global change, which include, for example, demographic change, climate change and the globalisation of economic systems, are an enormous challenge for societies worldwide. Climate change is affecting the lives of millions of people in Africa, Europe and many other parts of the world. Current projections on future developments indicate that there is an urgent need to develop concepts on how to adapt to these challenges in due course. Science and research offer proactive approaches to deal with the current and future changes expected. The role of science is to be understood as a service to those societies that are most severely affected by climate change and to provide the relevant decision-makers with evidence-based results and advice.
SASSCAL's mission is to strengthen the regional capacity to generate and use scientific knowledge products and services for decision making on climate change and adaptive land management through research management, human capital development and services brokerage.
SASSCAL's objectives are
- to conduct research in adaptation to climate change and sustainable land management
- to provide products, services and information for decision-making
- to contribute to the creation of a knowledge-based society through academic and non-academic capacity development programmes.
