President Thabo Mbeki attacked green laws recently, saying they were causing development delays that had contributed to ”a quite considerable slowing down of economic activity”.
Mbeki’s statement, made after last weekend’s Cabinet lekgotla, came amid growing resistance among national and provincial politicians to environmental impact assessments (EIAs).
Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu sparked outrage in the environmental world recently when she told the construction industry housing delivery would no longer be ”held hostage by butterfly eggs”.
And environmentalists reacted furiously to a report from the economic cluster of national ministries that the controversial De Hoop Dam on the Olifants River in Limpopo ”would be completed by 2010”. Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin said ”there has been progress on environmental authorisation to the satisfaction of relevant parties” — despite the fact that the EIA process has not been completed.
Fumed Nick King, CEO of environmental NGO, the Endangered Wildlife Trust: ”Are our politicians remotely aware of our national legislation? How are they ‘above the law’ in circumventing it? Where is required ‘due process’ in the legislated EIA process?”
Under pressure to speed up the EIA process, the Department of Environmental Affairs introduced revised regulations in early July. The department said these would streamline EIA processes, but critics worry they will weaken environmental protection in favour of unfettered development.
Mbeki said on Sunday that because of lack of capacity there was a ”frightening” backlog of EIAs at provincial level. EIAs were necessary because development had to take into account the impact on the environment, but they had resulted in delays.
He could not say how many EIA applications were outstanding, but said consultants would have to be appointed to help process urgently outstanding applications.
Writing in the Mail & Guardian in April, Minister of Environment Marthinus van Schalkwyk said 50% of EIA applications had been finalised within six months, though about 6,5% had taken more than two years.
Politicians who had a problem with EIAs were aiming at the wrong target, King said. ”EIAs are just a tool. The point is that the environmental concerns are real. This is not about delaying development, but getting the right development.”
Late last year a range of organisations, including South African National Parks, lodged appeals against the 21-storey-high De Hoop Dam, mainly because of evidence it could cut off essential water supplies to the Kruger National Park and neighbouring Mozambique.
Van Schalkwyk has sent the appeals for independent review and was unable to say this week when the outcome would be known.
If the appeals are successful, the dam could be halted — as were the N2 tollroad along the Wild Coast and the expanded container terminal planned for Cape Town harbour.
But several politicians, including former minister of water affairs Buyelwa Sonjica and Limpopo Premier Sello Moloto, have gone on record in recent months as saying construction of the dam would start this year. It is needed to supply water to platinum mines planned for Sekhukhuneland.
Officials from the water affairs department, accompanied by members of the national portfolio committee and the Limpopo provincial government, visited the site on Monday. They discussed plans to build a specially designed outlet to allow downstream releases of water, said communications director Thandi Mapukata.
But Rupert Lorimer of the National Parks Support Group Trust, one of the groups opposing the dam, told the M&G there was no guarantee this would work. For the first time on record, the Olifants River stopped flowing last year for 78 days — mainly because of drought and other dams.
”President Mbeki is known to support the De Hoop Dam, but have the politicians been properly informed of the real consequences?” Lorimer asked.
”Unless they take serious action about the downstream releases, there will be permanent irreversible damage to the environment.”
Bulldozers move into ‘Brockovich’ wetland
Developers are again bulldozing a wetland on the East Rand that the woman dubbed ”Boksburg’s Erin Brockovich” thought she had saved from being turned into a petrol station, writes Fiona Macleod
Nicole Barlow, triumphant after she won a court case against the developers in May, was despondent when she discovered the earth-moving equipment back at the Libradene wetland last Thursday.
Barlow had received a letter from the Director General of Environmental Affairs, Pam Yako, stating that permission to build the petrol station was based on a fraudulent signature.
The provincial environmental department had threatened court action if building resumed. The department, which listed the wetland as an ”irreplaceable site” of importance, halted the development when it was almost complete late last year.
But the developer, Petro Props, is intent on finishing the filling station. Though the company’s lawyers did not return calls from the Mail & Guardian recently, managing director AndrÃ