Does ”between a rock and hard place” summarise the current debate on environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and their relationship to development? Perhaps in sentiment, but not specifically. The Latin version of the idiom is more telling: ”In front the precipice, behind the wolves.”
While the idiom as metaphor may lean towards the melodramatic, it is not far off the mark with respect to the status quo of EIAs and economic development.
President Thabo Mbeki’s recent observations and associated urging of the national environmental authority to clear the EIA backlog is wise and well timed, as is the prudent and circumspect echo given to the sentiment in a recent Mail & Guardian editorial (”Long-term cancer”, August 4).
That there is a specific problem regarding EIA processing by government authorities is undeniable. But the well-recognised (and overstated) capacity constraints and inefficiencies cannot be wheeled out as the sole whipping boy when development is construed as being impeded by ”the environment”.
EIAs are well-established tools and are here to stay — but perhaps they are not most effective in their current form (the new EIA regulations help to correct this). They are not, however, a panacea, nor are they flawless, especially if viewed out of context.
Those who are active in the environmental sector, if they are honest, know of many elephants in the room.
Near Welkom in the Free State gold fields, for example, a latent, compelling melange of environmental contamination is uneasily ensconced by geophysical chance in a 300ha site among wetlands, tailings dams and mixed human settlement. Adjunct to commercial perspectives and large residential settlement — anxious not to bite the hand that feeds — the smallest disruption could unleash a pollution plume that would certainly be the largest in South African history.
Various EIAs and similar studies have been completed for the areas in question, largely in response to sporadic, inconsistent interest from the authorities. None have reached the public domain. Strategic planning at the boardroom level would have reduced the mountain to a molehill, improving the financial, natural and manufactured capital — and lowering the risk to human and social capital.
Serious and rigorous thinking about the costly environmental and sustainability aspects of development is a rarity in the early stages of project development.
This is a large and inadequately acknowledged part of the ”EIA problem”. Proponents of development — through ignorance, arrogance or both — often fail to plan or provide adequate resources. Environmental considerations are something that can be ”sorted out” later on, much like checking a box.
Last-minute crunches or the unanticipated requirements of funding institutes often initiate paroxysms of project panic: knees jerk and EIAs are cobbled, cut and pasted together, their potential complexity handed over to only too-willing consultants who endeavour to walk them through an already overstretched authority — the wolves at the proverbial door. And the precipice stares back, doing its best to maintain the high ground.
High-level, strategic attention would obviate, to a large degree, the problems with environmental authorisations further down the line.
Brent Johnson is with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (Environmental Management Services Research Group). He writes in his personal capacity