Merit award for innovation ‒ Environmental best practice in not-for-profit organisations: Endangered Wildlife Trust EIA Toolkit
Assessing the impact of developments such as the Coega harbour project in Port Elizabeth is something the public can become more easily involved in, thanks to a new electronic toolkit.
The right to a healthy environment is enshrined in the South African Constitution’s Bill of Rights, but how many of us truly know how to exercise that right, especially when it comes to monitoring developments that might infringe it?
For years environmentalists, NGOs, non-profit organisations and the public have bemoaned the fact that Parliament has made it difficult to participate in the processes that decide whether building developments and mining projects get the green light from government.
These difficulties are not peculiar to South Africa. Across the world people have been flinging themselves in front of earth-movers, both physically and metaphorically, in an effort to prevent damage to fragile environments, such as rain forests and wetlands.
The advent of environmental impact assessments (EIA) came about as a result of pressure on the world’s leaders to be more discerning about the long-term effect of humankind’s actions.
Unfortunately, the processes around EIAs have been cumbersome and, especially where the public is involved, largely incomprehensible, dissuading all but die-hard activists from involvement. However, an innovative guide to navigating EIAs is helping to change the landscape in more ways than one.
The EIA Toolkit is the brainchild of the Endangered Wildlife Trust and its law and policy working group. Established with the aim of becoming a centre of excellence in the development and implementation of conservation and biodiversity-focused law and policy, the working group has concentrated its efforts on public awareness and capacity-building in environmental rights and legislation.
As a result, the EIA Toolkit has earned the trust a merit award for innovation in the environmental best practice category of the Greening the Future Awards.
In their assessment of the EIA Toolkit, Greening the Future’s judges said the trust showed commendable “boldness” in tackling the government on critical issues and made a difference where it was needed. As an educational tool, they said the toolkit was a good entry and added significant value.
The trust, an NGO and non- profit conservation organisation founded in 1973, encourages individual and collective environmental responsibility, bestowing responsibility for custodianship of Southern Africa’s natural wealth on all its citizens. It initiates and implements conservation research and action programmes, prevents species extinction, maintains biodiversity and ecosystem functionality and supports sustainable use of natural resources and management.
The trust has 17 working groups that coordinate activities, such as research, mitigation of threats to species and ecosystems and environmental awareness campaigns, as well as governance, advocacy and policy and strategic industrial partnerships.
Species working groups include those focusing on the riverine rabbit, South African cranes, carnivores, marine and coastal conservation and birds of prey.
A large team of skilled trust field staff is deployed throughout Southern Africa. Its priorities are the indentification of the key factors threatening biodiversity and development of ways to reduce environmental risk and reverse the processes that drive species extinction and ecosystem degradation.
The EIA Toolkit is an electronic guide to the EIA process, from document requirements and relevant legislation to participation from stakeholders and interested parties. It was initiated in response to mounting inquiries from the public, landowners and conservancies seeking guidance on their rights and responsibilities and the opportunities that were open to them to become involved in development planning processes.
Like all the trust’s initiatives, it relies on outside funding and has been supported by partners, including the Tony and Lizette Lewis Foundation, the International Association for Impact Assessment’s Capacity Building in Biodiversity and Impact Assessment Project, Regenesis, and Allison Rumsey.
The information in the toolkit is based on the new EIA regulations enacted under the National Environmental Management Act (107 of 1998), which took effect on July 1 2006.
Accessible from the trust’s website, the toolkit is a practical and user-friendly outline of the key EIA processes for ordinary South Africans, giving them the legal right to participate in any EIA and providing them with the opportunity to understand and comment on a proposed activity.
It includes relevant provincial-specific information, such as contact details, provincial guidelines and document templates, as well as answers to frequently asked questions and sections on how to consider biodiversity and other environmental concerns in the EIA process.
According to Rita Hamm, CEO of the United States-based International Association for Impact Assessment, the trust’s toolkit is invaluable in South Africa — a region where biodiversity is under increasing threat.
“The toolkit is innovative in many respects,” says Hamm. “First, it is aimed at the public rather than environmental consultants and developers. Second, by using the internet as the access platform, the trust has made the tool accessible to many more people.”
To help keep the toolkit up to date, the trust’s law and policy working group will undertake a programme of continuous research.
Changes in legislation, feedback from users and case studies will be used to keep the toolkit accurate and relevant.
In addition, expansion of the toolkit will take place with the addition of further content to existing sections, as well as the development of new sections, which will be customised for specific sectors such as mining and housing.