South Africa’s environmental impact assessment rules are up for revision again, nearly 30 years after it became mandatory for local developers to study the implications of their projects more carefully before breaking ground.
How might the public react to law reform proposals promising more flexible firearm control, flexible traffic rules or flexible salary payments?
Little wonder then that plans to introduce a new Flexible Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) System have raised several eyebrows.
While many developers will welcome proposals that may allow them to skirt what they see as an onerous and costly obstacle to rapid project approval, a more sceptical response is likely to emerge from public interest and environmental watchdog groups.
EIAs have become one of the most widely adopted environmental policy tools across the world, with more than 180 countries now using this system to limit environmental harm.
Before becoming a legal requirement in South Africa in the late 1990s, EIAs were done voluntarily. The most prominent example of a voluntary EIA was the 1992 study on whether Rio Tinto and Richards Bay Minerals could strip-mine the coastal sand dunes on the Eastern Shores of Lake St Lucia (now part of the iSimangaliso World Heritage Site).
Since the introduction of the Environment Conservation Act (1989) and the National Environmental Management Act (1998) thousands of environmental impact studies have been conducted for a wide variety of projects, ranging from power lines to road construction, coal mining or the construction of nuclear power stations.
The initial EIA regulations have also been amended or “streamlined” several times, in 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2017.
Now the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) has embarked on a series of national consultation meetings to propose further changes, hoping to conclude the initial consultation by the end of this month (April).
According to the DFFE, there is a “clarion call for change in environmental assessment to cater for more flexibility”
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