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Namibia is world-renowned for its incredibly dark skies by the astronomy community, and yet, the country is not well recognised as a dark sky destination by tourists and travellers. Forged by a collaboration between the Universities of Oxford and Namibia, together we are using astronomy as a means for capacity-building and sustainable socio-economic growth via educating tour guides and promoting dark sky tourism to relevant stakeholders.
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Astronomy plays a major role in the scientific landscape of Namibia. Because of its excellent sky conditions, Namibia is home to ground-based observatories like the High Energy Spectroscopic System (H.E.S.S.), in operation since 2002. Located near the Gamsberg mountain, H.E.S.S. performs groundbreaking science by detecting very-high-energy gamma rays from astronomical objects. The fascinating stories behind many of them are featured regularly in the ``Source of the Month, a blog-like format intended for the general public with more than 170 features to date. In addition to other online communication via social media, H.E.S.S. outreach activities have been covered locally, e.g. through `open days and guided tours on the H.E.S.S. site itself. An overview of the H.E.S.S. outreach activities are presented in this contribution, along with discussions relating to the current landscape of astronomy outreach and education in Namibia. There has also been significant activity in the country in recent months, whereby astronomy is being used to further sustainable development via human capacity-building. Finally, as we take into account the future prospects of radio astronomy in the country, momentum for a wider range of astrophysics research is clearly building -- this presents a great opportunity for the astronomy community to come together to capitalise on this movement and support astronomy outreach, with the overarching aim to advance sustainable development in Namibia.
Astronomy plays a major role in the scientific landscape of Namibia and Southern Africa. Considerable progress has been achieved scientifically as well as in terms of human capacity development in the field. In all wavelength regimes accessible with ground-based instruments, the largest of those instruments are situated in Southern Africa: MeerKAT, the Southern African Large Telescope, and the High Energy Stereoscopic System. Because of the excellent observing conditions from Namibian soil, further large-scale projects such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array considered sites in Namibia and the Africa Millimetre Telescope will eventually be built there. Against this background, the current situation of astronomical research and education in Namibia is reviewed, focusing on optical, radio and gamma-ray astronomy and also including smaller scale projects. Further, the role of astronomy, with particular focus on developmental aspects in the African context is outlined and the progress in human capacity development is summarized.
In this study, we will discuss recent developments in risk management of the global financial and insurance business with respect to sustainable development. So far climate change aspects have been the dominant aspect in managing sustainability risks and opportunities, accompanied by the development of several legislative initiatives triggered by supervisory authorities. However, a sole concentration on these aspects misses out other important economic and social facets of sustainable development goals formulated by the UN. Such aspects have very recently come into the focus of the European Committee concerning the Solvency II project for the European insurance industry. Clearly the new legislative expectations can be better handled by larger insurance companies and holdings than by small- and medium-sized mutual insurance companies which are numerous in central Europe, due to their historic development starting in the late medieval ages and early modern times. We therefore also concentrate on strategies within the risk management of such small- and medium-sized enterprises that can be achieved without much effort, in particular those that are not directly related to climate change.
Astrotourism brings new opportunities to generate sustainable socio-economic development, preserve cultural heritage, and inspire and educate the citizens of the globe. This form of tourism can involve many different activities, such as visiting observatories or travelling to remote areas to experience an evening under a pristine, dark night sky. Together, our UK-Namibian collaboration is working to develop and showcase astrotourism in Namibia, and to enhance the possibility for astrotourism worldwide.
Accurate and comprehensive measurements of a range of sustainable development outcomes are fundamental inputs into both research and policy. We synthesize the growing literature that uses satellite imagery to understand these outcomes, with a focus on approaches that combine imagery with machine learning. We quantify the paucity of ground data on key human-related outcomes and the growing abundance and resolution (spatial, temporal, and spectral) of satellite imagery. We then review recent machine learning approaches to model-building in the context of scarce and noisy training data, highlighting how this noise often leads to incorrect assessment of models predictive performance. We quantify recent model performance across multiple sustainable development domains, discuss research and policy applications, explore constraints to future progress, and highlight key research directions for the field.
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