This article is a review of the dominant literature on water issues, water rights and the environment in southern Africa. Being the first in a series of reviews of different regions, it is framed through a survey of national literature that has emerged since the 1990s, with a particular focus on South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana. Its central objective and/or purpose is to review select publications in which I foreground significant historiographical tendencies as they relate to my topic on water and the environment. The major tendencies or trends define the content of the article about these countries that form an important part of the SADC region. It traces how water history (a subdivision of environmental history) in southern Africa has developed and evolved, and outlines how scholarly debates have changed over time. To achieve this, I track the major themes of water-history focusing on who produced the works cited, when were they produced, and critically surveying their tenors, themes or intention. What motivated this write-up and assessment of the source material is that several works on this topic have been produced by multiple scholars from diverse academic disciplines: water experts and/or practitioners, ecologists and/or environmentalists, historians, economists, social scientists, hydrologists and policy makers. But not much work has been conducted in the social sciences domain to highlight major water rights and environmental benchmarks from an economic history perspective – a perspective that combines the social and economic analysis of events without disregarding the impact of politics on life and society.

中文翻译：

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南部非洲的水与环境：1990年以来的文献综述

本文是对有关南部非洲的水问题，水权和环境的主流文献的评论。它是对不同地区的一系列评论中的第一篇，它是根据对1990年代以来出现的国家文学的调查而设计的，尤其是针对南非，津巴布韦和博茨瓦纳。它的主要目的和/或目的是审查精选的出版物，在这些出版物中我会发现与我的水与环境主题相关的重大史学趋势。主要趋势或趋势定义了关于这些国家的文章内容，这些国家是南部非洲发展共同体地区的重要组成部分。它追踪了南部非洲的水史（环境史的一部分）如何发展和演变，并概述了学术辩论随时间的变化。为了达成这个，我跟踪水史的主要主题，重点是谁创作了被引用的作品，何时创作的作品，并批判性地调查了他们的任期，主题或意图。促使撰写和评估原始资料的原因是，来自不同学术领域的多位学者（包括水专家和/或从业者，生态学家和/或环保主义者，历史学家，经济学家，社会科学家，水文学家和政策制定者。但是，在社会科学领域，从经济历史的角度强调主要水权和环境基准的工作很少，这是一种结合事件的社会和经济分析而又不顾政治对生活和社会影响的观点。