The Southern Africa Environment Outlook provides an integrated analysis of southern Africa's environment. It assesses the current state of the environment in the region, and gives a reflection on trends over the past decade and the next one beyond.

The report highlights key emerging environmental issues in southern Africa, and also presents a set of future scenarios for the region. It comes more than 10 years after the first comprehensive State of the Environment in Southern Africa published in late 1994, and more than five years after the first report on a single ecosystem, State of the Environment Zambezi River Basin 2000.