SADC Climate Services Centre
Southern Africa Regional Climate Outlook Forum (SARCOF)
SARCOF Statements
SADC has been able to develop some mitigation measures to deal with impacts of extreme climate events on sustainable multisectoral socio-economic development and rational use of natural resources. Among the activities of CSC is the Southern African Regional Outlook Forum (SARCOF). SARCOF was initiated in Kadoma, Zimbabwe, in September 1997. This is part of a global effort to coordinate forecasting activities of respective regions for the benefit of the user community. This collective and inter-disciplinary process of training, technical analysis and preparedness seminars formulate appropriate strategies to combat the adverse effects of climate extremes on various socio-economic sectors such as agriculture, disaster management, health, water resources, media, etc.
The SARCOF process have brought together climate scientists, the user community and decision makers, from SADC, other parts of Africa and from cooperating institutions in the region and overseas. The objective of this effort is to improve applications of climate information and prediction services for sustainable socio-economic development. The Forums also look at lessons learned from previous SARCOFs. In particular, the usability of forecasts and their verification are areas that generate interest from participants. The CSC is responsible for organizing the annual SARCOF process. This has this far been supported by international cooperating partners (ICPs).
Many decision-makers, from a variety of socio-economic sectors, right up to the highest levels of government do use the SARCOF products. Currently many governments in the SADC region take the SARCOF and related products as major factors in their various plans.
There Pre-SARCOF Climate Expert Workshops that take place. The overall objective of the workshops is to strengthen capacity of the SADC NMHSs in generating and communicating seasonal forecasts in their respective countries. These experts prepare seasonal forecasts for their respective countries that were later presented at the consensus forum, SARCOFs.
In the past few years, the CSC continued to increase the capacity of SADC NMHSs in seasonal forecast through the SARCOF process in an effort to strengthen and build capacity in the region among the professional and technical staff to monitor and forecast drought, floods and other extreme events that meet with the multisectoral user requirements.
At the same time, there needs to be appropriate staff levels in order for the CSC to operate more optimally, lest the high profile stature of the CSC will eventually suffer. Some of the constraints that have limited the CSC to attain desired levels of operation include the inadequacy in human and equipment resources. It is, therefore, imperative to take all steps necessary to improve the staff levels in order for CSC to function more proficiently. It is against this background that there are proposals to improve the capacity of the Centre through the provision of more professional staff.