REPORT ON ATTENDANCE OF THE COLLOQUIUM ON THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT ACT FOR MINING

By: Reuben Heydenrych, 13 April 2000

On behalf of the MCSA, I attended a colloquium on 11 November 1999 about the implications of the National Environmental Management Act (Act no. 107 of 1998) on the mining and metallurgy industry. The colloquium was organised by the SA Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and the International Association for Impact Assessment. The colloquium was attended by about 300 delegates from the mining industry, government, the environmental consultancy and environmental NGO sectors.

The NEMA is a recent piece of legislation that contains some innovative provisions relating to the public’s right to institute private prosecutions and to enforce any piece of environmental legislation in the public interest.

The keynote address by Chief Director Paul McClons of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEA&T) shed little light on the NEMA specifically and sketched only the broad outline of the department’s direction. This did not include any specific mining-related strategies. The DEA&T is not, for instance, planning to list mining as an activity requiring an environmental impact assessment in terms of the EIA regulations.

The Department of Minerals and Energy, which promotes mining and also ostensibly self-regulates its huge environmental impacts, displayed its traditional hostile attitude towards improving the environmental performance of the mining industry. Their representative Mr Willie van Zyl outlined their revision of the “Aide Memoire” for the preparation of mining rehabilitation programmes. However, the rehabilitation programme is a management tool that is used once the mine is operational. The DME is still steadfastly resisting the calls for environmental impact assessments to determine during the planning phase whether mining is indeed the best land use for a particular piece of land. Reading between the lines, they do not seem to see the NEMA as a direct threat to mining.

Other presentations showed the mining industry’s record of poor environmental and social performance and sketched pictures of what a “model”mine would look like in 20 to 30 years time. Rather than seeing this as a direct consequence of legislation such as the NEMA, it was predicted that the drivers for such change would primarily be social pressure.

None of the presentations showed that the NEMA could be used for direct intervention in mining proposals or existing mining. The overall impression I got was that the NEMA will not materially assist the MCSA to stop mining in sensitive mountainous environments, although it will indirectly assist us in enforcing other environmental legislation.

This must be seen in the context of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism’s internal acknowledgement that the NEMA has been a failure because it is regarded as unimplementable. They are about to start a two year process of rewriting this law and the Environment Conservation Act (Act no. 73 of 1989), the NEMA’s predecessor.

The NEMA was rushed through at the end of the term of office of ex-environment Minister Pallo Jordan and ex-deputy-minister Peter Mokaba. After failing to deliver anything of substance in the preceeding 3½ years, they unfortunately put the NEMA together very hastily in an attempt to prove that they were worthy of keeping their posts in the new cabinet.

My belief, which was strengthened at the colloquium, is that NGOs like the MCSA cannot rely on government to actively protect the environment against mining and that public awareness and pressure, as was the case in the St. Lucia mining proposal, will remain our most powerful weapon against mining.