Environmental conflicts may arise as a result of disagreements over appropriate land use. They may arise from competition for scarce resources, such as fresh water or fish. Conflict may result from inadequate management of polluting and hazardous materials, which may have a serious impact on human health and the survival of ecosystems. Conflict also exists around appropriate wildlife management strategies. Future international conflict may arise over shared resources, environmental conditionality on trade, and transboundary pollution.
All these conflicts point to the need for appropriate instruments for their proactive resolution. Yet very little is in place at provincial, national and regional levels. Under Schedule Four of the Constitution, provinces and the national government share environmental responsibilities. The provinces have little capacity to act in the environmental arena, and often give environmental issues a low priority, even though their economic progress depends on natural resources being secured, sustained and enhanced.
At national level, there has been little farsighted political leadership, an unreconstructed bureaucracy plagued by dead wood, little attention to capacity-building, and a dwindling of financial resources allocated to the environment as a result of creeping neo-liberal experimentation with the economy.
At a regional level, South Africa increasingly avails itself of neighbouring countries' natural resources, without necessarily ensuring redress of resulting setbacks to their development.
The environmental green paper is currently under discussion, yet there is no guarantee that the government will adopt progressive options for reforming environmental governance. Although policy is almost in place for settling conditions under which environmental impact assessments (EIAs) should occur, recent experience in South Africa points to the inadequacies of EIAs in resolving environmental conflicts. The policy debate under the auspices of the Consultative National Environmental Policy Process (CONNEPP) since August 1995 has shied away from the thorny issue of restructuring the institutions of environmental governance.
Without agreed upon mechanisms for resolving serious environmental conflicts, we can expect only ad hoc, random and unpredictable outcomes. These increase the chances of protracted disputes, and add to the insecurities of local communities, decision makers and potential investors.
By examining some of the more recent flashpoints we can analyse some of the defects that must be overcome and chart part of the way forward.
South Africa has enormous tourism potential, part of which arises from protected areas set aside for conservation purposes. Though significant achievements have been made in conservation, some ecological zones remain outside the system of protected areas. More land must be set aside for conservation. Yet traditional conservation approaches meant land was subtracted from potential local use and benefit. Local communities are questioning how they, too, can benefit from such use of their ancestral lands.
St Lucia is a case in point. In the past conservation competed as a land use with subsistence agriculture, sugar plantations, afforestation, and the defence force (which secured part of the area as a missile testing range). More recently, it competed with the mining industry. Coastal dunes on Lake St. Lucia's eastern shores contain significant mineral deposits, such as titanium. To maintain the life of their smelter further south, Richards Bay Minerals (RBM), a subsidiary of Gencor and Rio Tinto Zinc, secured a prospecting right in the 1980s for new sources of mineral sands on the eastern shores. In attempting to exercise its option to mine, RBM ran up against the Natal Parks Board, backed by environmental organisations keen to secure the eastern shores for conservation and tourism. RBM commissioned a lengthy EIA process, agreeing to abide by its recommendations to Cabinet after scrutiny of the EIA report by an independent review panel.
However, the EIA failed to take local communities' views into account. Former inhabitants had lost land, particularly to afforestation. Some felt mining would offer new job opportunities, while others felt such jobs would not necessarily be given to local people, nor, with the mining cycle of 17 years, would they be very sustainable.
St. Lucia is in the Hlabisa district, certainly one of the country's poorest areas. For the conservation project to succeed, it was vital to include local people in the fair and equitable distribution of resources from all forms of land use and economic activity. It was thus important that the EIA evaluate the opportunities for socio-economic development afforded by different land use options.
Though the review panel confounded expectations by rejecting the mining option, its report predated the democratic elections of 1994 by five months. The outgoing government left the decision to its successor, which broadly favoured the mining option, despite President Mandela having signed an environmentalists' petition against it.
In mid-1995 the question ended up on the desk of Derek Hanekom, the African National Congress (ANC) Minister for Land Affairs, because land claims for part of the eastern shore had been instituted by local communities. Hanekom visited the area and commissioned new studies to deal with gaps in the original EIA report and to resolve the question of whether tourism could outperform mining in enhancing local development. These studies went beyond the original EIA report in attempting to valorise the options, this time taking account of the multiplier effect tourism would have on the rest of the area's economy. It was conclusively demonstrated that mining was a less viable development option, and cabinet approved dropping the plans for mining the eastern shores.
Though this was a victory for the conservation lobby, the expectations of job creation in ecotourism have yet to be met and it is unclear whether the Natal Parks Board has the ability to translate promises into reality.
Land restitution for communities and individuals forcibly removed from the eastern shores is underway, but there is no guarantee that communities will opt for the solution endorsed by the national cabinet once title is re-established. Unless the conservation lobby can demonstrate conclusively that tourism is a more viable job creator, communities may choose to invite RBM to mine the land. While cabinet, acting in "the national interest", may override this impulse, KwaZulu Natal land claims commissioner Dr Cherryl Walker has not ruled out the sovereign right of communities to choose the land use option that suits them best. The last word on St. Lucia is still awaited.
Other examples of environmental flashpoints over land use include:
It has taken over two years for the government to develop a fishing policy that takes into account the rights of local coastal communities. In the apartheid years these communities lost independent access to marine resources while larger companies dominated fishing quotas. The new policy attempts to redress this imbalance, without jeopardising the position of larger companies as important employers in coastal towns, especially along the Atlantic. Policy implementation will need close monitoring to ensure that equity prevails. If not, many fishing communities' livelihoods will remain only seasonal, dependent on the whims of larger marine corporations.
The fate of freshwater resources needs similar attention. In particular, the needs of different users of river water need to be balanced. This is particularly important along catchments such as the Orange River, and Mpumalanga's rivers. The latter are very vulnerable, since drought, industrial pollution and abstraction have meant both the quantity and quality of river water for downstream users is at risk. The Olifants River, for example, rises in the coal producing areas of the Mpumalanga highveld and flows polluted through afforested and densely populated areas before reaching the Kruger Park (by which time it is hardly of any value to conservation), and, eventually, Mozambique. The Olifants River Forum was recently established to express the interests of the different users and initiate discussion about ensuring adequate allocation of access to the river's waters. Similarly, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) sponsored the Orange River Replanning Study, drawing river users into the debate about how to regulate future use.
Environmentalists are extremely active with regard to the importation of toxic materials into South Africa. Despite assurances by former cabinet ministers that this practice would no longer be sanctioned, some attempts have been made to import waste materials under the guise of "recycling" them. The most notorious case is that of Thor Chemicals, a subsidiary of a British company, with a plant in the KwaZulu Natal midlands. Thor Chemicals took advantage of weak environmental regulation to import mercury waste, ostensibly for recycling. However, no evidence of successful recycling has ever been shown, and visits to the plant indicate that the exercise was an attempt to dispose of the waste. Management of the mercury was so bad that it seeped into local rivers at lethal concentration levels, and a number of workers at the plant died while the health of others was seriously damaged by exposure to mercury. In sentencing management of the plant, South African courts demanded insignificant fines of R13 500. A commission of enquiry, chaired by law professor Dennis Davis, is currently under way.
Despite the Thor case and South Africa's adherence to the Basel Convention, the government allowed permits to be granted in August 1995 for importation of a cupric arsenide consignment, also ostensibly for recycling purposes. Local and international green organisations blew the whistle, challenging the government to reverse its decision. This incident, at a time when the government was sponsoring the first Consultative National Environmental Policy, threatened to undermine the credibility of its intentions to draw the public into environmental policy making processes.
Conflicts at local level over the siting of hazardous waste landfills have often been highly contentious. Local objections to poor management of sites have caused their closure, for example at Margolis in Gauteng, and at Umlazi, south of Durban. The public has become involved in monitoring these closures, and the continued use of sites such as Holfontein on the East Rand. Public outcries about the future use of Chloorkop (in Kempton Park) for hazardous dumping have effectively placed a moratorium on its opening. Efforts to create a hazardous waste landfill site in the Vaal triangle are also likely to meet with popular resistance.
Over a hundred years of mining has left a legacy of severe degradation. Often companies that caused the damage no longer exist, and the scale of the environmental damage makes the cost of mitigation too enormous for any one agency to bear. The powerful Chamber of Mines has ensured that the Department of Minerals and Energy, set up to promote mining rather than curb its impacts, is the regulatory authority over the industry.
Recently mines released acid into the Blesbokspruit area of Gauteng, an endangered wetland of international significance, and resisted attempts by the DWAF to close their operations until mitigation measures were in place. The DWAF was obliged to compromise its role and allow a degree of continued pollution of the vulnerable Blesbokspruit.
In a recent international seminar on developing national policies for managing radioactive waste, a Chamber of Mines speaker revealed that over forty years of uranium mining has left a legacy of radioactivity in slimes dams on the Witwatersrand that will be too expensive to remedy. South Africa urgently needs a vigorous policy debate on the environmental impacts of mining.
There are few agreed-on mechanisms for resolving environmental conflict in South Africa. As communities are further empowered to intervene in conflicts over resources, the urgency to resolve disputes will intensify. Debates about inappropriate industrialisation, conservation, and securing natural resources will continue to rage. On one hand, environmental impact assessments will need to be integrated into development planning in a way that goes beyond tokenism. Planning needs to become more strategic, emphasising long-term sustainability of resources and ecosystems.
On the other hand, development options are essential, and environmentalists need to engage with developers in a proactive way to establish norms for appropriate and sustainable industrialisation. Government will have to impress a new vision of a sustainable society on industrialists still imbued with older development paradigms.
Unless we address the need for institutions to mediate environmental conflict, the potential flashpoints will continue to deepen economic uncertainty at a moment in our national development when we can least afford it.