Aspasia Karras
A DRIVE to help local communities deal with their environmental needs, so that they do not become recipients of everyone else’s problems, is contained in a White Paper to be presented to the Cabinet next week.
The White Paper, which is likely to be made public later this month, comes at a time when tree-huggers and environmentalists are not the only people taking the environment seriously. The environment has become an everyday issue for many – so much so that there’s a fast-growing market for sophisticated environmental home products going far beyond the simple water purifier of the past.
Among products developed in the United States is a high-tech home test-kit for lead, carbon-monoxide, UV radon and radioactive strontium-cessium. The latter is a critical measurement for those living in the Pacific North-West who are not entirely convinced of the all-clears given by their governments about the nuclear fall-out from Chernobyl in 1986.
Another interactive product provides real- time information about a neighbourhood’s environmental status. It is a monitoring system designed for informed decision- making that shows current and historic levels of pollution, hospital mortality statistics, and local disease clusters – all overlaid on a map of the area.
No wonder that big business in many parts of the world has placed environmental concerns high on the agenda. According to Nicky Robins, environmental manager for Nissan SA, business has recognised that “environmental considerations are a strategic necessity in a global industrial market”.
In South Africa, an Industrial Environmental Forum was established in 1990 by several key industries. The forum was relatively small to start with. But membership has flourished since its 1991 business and environment conference when more than 400 delegates discussed the impact of international standards such as the ISO 14001 and the development of the international environment system standards.
Karin Ireton, manager of the forum, explains: “Business has certain driving forces. You dance to the tune of the market that you are servicing. For example, if your market is in West Germany, which is an environmentally sensitive market place, you have to follow suit. The consumer calls the tune, if they want environmentally appropriate products, business has to listen to that.”
Robins agrees: “A shift has definitely taken place during the last five years. While it could be argued that companies have jumped on to the environmental bandwagon for marketing purposes, the reality of the situation is that any company exporting to industrialised markets and countries must improve its environmental performance.”
She argues that consumers in Europe and the US have two considerations, apart from price, when buying. First, they want to know how much “blood” is on a product; in other words, what safety standards are applied in making a product. And second, they demand to know the extent to which the product is being manufactured to the detriment of the environment.
Some critics argue that imposing such standards on the developing world is problematic, in the context of radical differences between developed and developing states and their respective market hold.
More ironically, almost all rich countries will overshoot their year 2000 greenhouse gas emission targets, agreed to at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1990, some by as much as 40%.
The South African government has also climbed on to the international protocol circuit by signing three international conventions: the Montreal Protocol, which looks at ozone depleting substances; the Basel Convention, concerned with trans- boundary waste; and the International Convention, focusing on the climate.
Environmental activist groups like GEM would argue that many of the standards South Africa has adopted are too low in terms of the real crisis facing the country. Studies reporting on the condition of the South African environment in the 1990s claim that where coal-burning power stations are situated, annual emissions of sulphur dioxide, the main ingredient of acid rain, total between 31 and 57 tons/km – a very high figure by international standards.
In a paper on development and the environment, Peter Ngobese and Jacklyn Cock of Wits University argue that the South African case is a microcosm of the planet’s environmental degradation. The combination of northern problems like acid rain and southern problems like soil erosion makes the country one of the most polluted areas in the world.
For example, 400-million tons of top soil is being washed away in South Africa annually. A calculation of the replacement value estimates that at a cost of R30/ton of top soil, the value of the soil eroded only from the KwaZulu-Natal catchments each year is not less than R500-million and could easily be three or four times that figure. In the Eastern Cape, with far higher soil loss rates, the amount could run into many billions of rand annually.
Despite the crisis, a holistic government approach to the issue has been a long time coming. Although a Green and White Paper process has been under way during the last three years, it does not help that the ministry responsible has changed hands and management so often.
An initial discussion document produced last year has led to the establishment of a Consultative National Environmental Policy Process. The White Paper on the environment which has been prepared is now heading for the Cabinet.
The key concern of the White Paper is to ensure that local communities are informed and are involved in the major decisions affecting their lives.
An integrated environment management approach will ensure that the national department sets the norms and standards and, in partnership with the provinces and local government, works out ways to monitor and lead.
Lofty aims, but they are dependent on the capacity of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. With limited staff and skills to draw on, the department will be hard-pressed to monitor and evaluate many of the standards it sets.
The real crux of the problem is that environment is low on the government’s strategic priority list. As a result, the department has a small budget which needs to be stretched.
Robins argues: “It is understandable that they need to rationalise and that they have low capacity and few human resources, but if they deprioritise the environment now, it will cost more in the long term.
“The government must integrate its development strategies with its environment strategies, or the cost of fixing up what went wrong in the past will be too high to bear.”
However, this is not necessarily the approach the government is taking: the growth, employment and redistribution strategy programme does not mention the environment as a consideration at all.
South Africa shares this problem with many other countries. Most states send only their environmental ministers to sign the international protocols, without the big guns – the industry and treasury ministers – and this ensures that most promises are empty ones.
Meanwhile, business has set its own standards and evaluates itself. The Industrial Environmental Forum promotes the use of a holistic systems approach like the ISO 14001.
The concept, according to Ireton, is that a company sets standards based on environmental management systems developed to international benchmarks. The idea is that environmental management must be incorporated into a systematic framework that makes it an integral part of the whole business function.
The second element of the ISO standards addresses the need to monitor and evaluate the systems put in place. They set criteria for ideal environmental monitors.
Ireton explains: “ISO at its best functions as it is designed – to be a voluntary system whereby businesses, to gain a clearance certificate, measure themselves against criteria that they themselves set”.
Going the route of getting the ISO certificate can be expensive and therefore only relevant to companies where the business incentive is large enough. The problem with smaller firms is that there is less incentive to be environmentally friendly, and the state has very little capacity to monitor them.
Ireton points out: “There is a role for government to play, but you should make it the responsibility of the people carrying out the business. If you create an atmosphere in which people only do things because an inspector is at the door, the attitude change that sees environmental issues as essential to their business practices will not occur. The government does not actually have the capacity to have so many inspectors.”
The fact remains, however, that it is the market and business that got the environment into trouble in the first place. The fossil-fuel industry is worth more than R7-trillion a year. Setting their own standards, according to international benchmarks, may satisfy a sensitive Western customer, but may be entirely irrelevant to the real South African and global environmental problems.
This is the debate to follow with the publication of the White Paper. It certainly is a policy vacuum which the government should be addressing.