Industry-driven policing through a proposed Peat Users’ Association is being mooted to ensure responsible peat mining and use in South Africa. Peat is a type of wetland soil that is high in organic content. Significantly, the vast mires (peat-forming wetlands) of the northern hemisphere hold about a third of the world’s soil carbon. But peat mining is alsp destroying precious wetlands and water resources.
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/ 17 January 2005
The case of global warming is instructive, particularly in the wake of Pretoria’s October 2004 climate-change policy, which promotes World Bank-designed "carbon trading". This approach endorses the idea of the right to pollute as a property right granted free to big business, which can then trade in pollution rather than reducing industrialised country emissions.