Eskom told the Mail & Guardian it had only received a R9 billion World Bank loan to decommission its coal-fired Komati power station. (Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
About R15-million, and one year. That’s the budget, and the deadline, granted to the department of environment, forestry and fisheries, to solve the greater Johannesburg region’s dirty air problem.
In October last year, the World Bank gave the department a $1-million grant to buy the right equipment to measure the air quality problem in the region, which includes the Ekurhuleni and Tshwane metro municipalities, and come up with a plan to solve it.
The department’s spokesperson, Albie Modise said the ultimate plan will be a template that can be used by metros and the Gauteng provincial government, to combat air pollution.
Air pollution is nothing new to those living in the region, especially during the winter months. Clogged sinuses and early morning whiffs of sulphur are a normal part of life.
On Monday, the amount of PM2.5, or fine particulate matter, in the air in Johannesburg, was three times higher than the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendations, according to the Swiss air quality monitor, IQAir.
The Mail & Guardian previously reported that Johannesburg’s air quality is the worst in the country, according to research from the University of Chicago.
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In February, the South African Weather Service issued a warning that high levels of pollution could be harmful to vulnerable people.
Gauteng contributes about 40% of the country’s entire GDP, according to the World Bank. With that comes industrial pollution and a lot of traffic. And the Johannesburg area is littered with mine dumps creating dust.
But the region’s air quality problem is also unique: it straddles two of South Africa’s worst air pollution hotspots: the Vaal Triangle and the Highveld priority area. Some parts of Johannesburg fall within the Vaal, while Ekurhuleni forms part of the Highveld.
These areas include 12 of Eskom’s 15 coal-fired power stations, Sasol’s crude oil refinery and its coal-to-liquid plant, and a swathe of manufacturing and other industry polluters.
Sandwiched here, without much wind, is the greater Johannesburg region. The result is more than just the thick layer of smog visible on the horizon. Air pollution is increasingly recognised as a leading cause of illness and early death internationally, and recent litigation has highlighted how hazardous it is to people.
In 2019, the Vukani Environmental Justice Movement in Action and environmental justice activist group, groundWork, took the government to court over air quality in the Highveld.
Arguments were heard in May this year. They argue that the air quality in the Highveld violates people’s constitutional right to a clean environment. Specifically, they argue that it violates section 24 of the constitution, which guarantees that “everyone has the right to an environment not harmful to their health or well-being”.
The applicants, represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights, want the court to declare that this right is being violated, and to order the government to take regulatory steps to rectify it.
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In response, the department’s minister, Barbara Creecy, on behalf of the government, acknowledged the “unacceptable levels of air pollution” in the Highveld and said everyone living or working there had her “sympathies”.
She said the government had taken numerous steps to try to resolve the problem, but that it was not practical or legally possible to “simply jump in” and make the numerous regulations that the applicants have asked for.
The WHO says outdoor (or ambient) air pollution accounts for 4.2-million deaths globally a year, caused by chronic respiratory diseases, lung cancer and strokes.
In 2016, the M&G reported that air pollution kills about 20 000 people a year in South Africa, costing the economy nearly R300-million.
The World Bank says average concentrations of coarse and fine particulate matter in the Vaal and the Highveld priority areas frequently exceed the national emissions standards, but there is not enough information at hand to properly assess what options are available to the government to deal with the problem.
The Highveld was declared a priority area in 2007 because of its poor air quality. In 2012, an air quality management plan for the area was developed, but environmentalists say little has changed for those living there, who struggle with asthma and other chronic respiratory infections.
One independent study found that the pollution from the 12 power stations, coupled with the pollution from Sasol’s coal-to-liquids plant in Secunda and the refinery in Sasolburg, was responsible for between 305 to 650 premature deaths in 2016.
That study was conducted by Dr Andy Gray, an air pollution specialist based in the United States. It was commissioned by groundWork.
The study also analysed 120 “vulnerable” sites such as schools and hospitals near these 14 facilities and found exposure to sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide far exceeded the WHO’s limits for air pollutants, risking the health of those living there.
The Vaal Triangle, which spans Sasolburg, Vereeniging and Vanderbijlpark, and includes some parts of Johannesburg such as Diepkloof and Soweto, is also badly polluted. Air pollution there, too, exceeds the set air quality standards for South Africa in some places, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research has found.
Rico Euripidou, the environmental health campaign manager at groundWork, said that although new plans to deal with air quality management were to be welcomed, they were not always implemented.
“Unless there is a regulatory framework around the plans, and unless those responsible are going to be held responsible for making the reductions in the air pollution emitted from their facilities, they [the plans] become a spectacular failure,” he said.
According to the World Bank’s website, the greater Johannesburg region project was approved in October last year and the closing date is October 31 this year.
The World Bank did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but documents on its website show that the project was due to start in 2019. But, four to five months of progress was lost because of the pandemic and the resultant lockdown in South Africa.
The legal agreement between the bank and the government was signed in February this year. The department is in the process of procuring monitoring equipment, the bank said.
This will be used to replace or upgrade existing air quality monitoring sites — in laboratories, on top of buildings and alongside highways. This is according to documents available on the World Bank website.
Modise said discussions about the project started in 2015 when the World Bank approached the department seeking to include Johannesburg in its Pollution Management and Environmental Health programme. Tshwane and Ekurhuleni would be added later.
Five other cities were approached by the World Bank, including Delhi in India and Cairo in Egypt.
“The World Bank stakeholders expressed an urgent need for increased support on pollution management in order to respond to the magnitude of the threat to human health and economies,” Modise said.
He could not say when the plan will be released but confirmed that it will be published once it is ready.
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