Environment impacts streamlined
Shaun Benton
20 April 2006A new system of environmental impact assessments (EIAs), announced on Wednesday by Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk, is designed to speed up decisions on proposed developments in the interest of faster economic growth.
The new system will streamline the often complex system of assessing the environmental impact of developments, as well as to provide "legislative clarity", according to Joanne Yawitch, a deputy director-general in the Environmental Affairs Department.
Yawitch was speaking at a media briefing in Pretoria with a video link-up to Cape Town, where the minister told reporters that "development and conservation need not be opposing end-goals".
The South African experience, said Van Schalkwyk, "continues to prove that the interests of communities and the interests of the environment can never be separated".
With the new regulations, the process would be shortened, he said. Developers planning new projects deserve an answer more promptly than the two or three years it has previously taken for an EIA to come through.
"People [proposing a development] deserve an answer, even if the answer is 'no'," Van Schalkwyk said.
Under the new regulations the government will be obliged to deliver a decision within 14 days for purely administrative actions, within 45 days for review and decision-making on minor reports, and from 60 to 105 days for review and decision making on complex reports.
A faster and cheaper process
"The result will be a faster and cheaper process, allowing better concentration of our resources on the more complex and potentially damaging activities - something we consider critical in facilitating the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa."
He said government wanted to ensure that the costs of doing business in South Africa were fair, adding that fewer EIAs would be required, with a focus only on activities with a potentially "substantial" impact on the environment.
"Too often our existing EIA system has been bogged down by over-exhaustive work on relatively minor applications - a good example is the more than 2 000 applications received last year by Gauteng alone for upgrades to telecommunication masts," Van Schalkwyk said.
"The list of activities requiring an EIA has been thoroughly reworked into nine thematic areas such as property development, energy generation, and industrial activities."
"These have been further divided into two schedules based on the nature and associated risk of the activity - those in schedule one, such as transformation of land to develop residential areas larger than three hectares, will now be subject to only a basic assessment process, whilst those in schedule two, like power stations, will require a thorough assessment process (scoping and EIA)."
The minister said it had been estimated that under the new lists, and with the introduction of "development thresholds", the number of EIA applications would be reduced by up to 20%.
Significant changes
Van Schalkwyk said the first EIAs, introduced in 1997, often resulted in unjustified and unnecessary time and monetary costs. Significant changes had been made to an earlier draft of the new regulations that were published in January 2005, following two rounds of public consultation.
The updated - and final - regulations are to be promulgated in the Government Gazette on 21 April.
They will then come into effect on 1 July 2006, with the exception of activities related to mining, which will come into effect on 1 April 2007.
It will be the first time that mining and related activities will be included in the same EIA system.
All applications lodged in terms of the old Environment Conservation Act regulations will be finalised in terms of those regulations, but these applicants have the option of withdrawing and resubmitting their plans under the new regulations.
Source: BuaNews
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