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South Africa: Green Groups Warn on Country Crisis
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Cape Argus (Cape Town)
26 July 2007
Posted to the web 26 July 2007
John Yeld
Cape Town
South Africa has some big "inconvenient truths" of its own when it comes to green issues, four of the country's leading environmental non-government organisations have warned.
These include a national development agenda - exemplified by Asgisa (Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa) - that is still based on a complete lack of attention to "very serious environmental constraints" identified in the recently released "2006 State of the Environment" report.
"If (the development agenda) continues to promote a growth path which is unsustainable in the long run, (South Africa's) environmental legislation and frameworks will never be implemented as they present any number of 'inconvenient truths'," say the Endangered Wildlife Trust, WWF - South Africa, Wilderness Foundation South Africa and Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa in a joint statement.
The four organisations were reacting to the SA Environmental Outlook (formerly called the State of Environment report), recently released by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, which warned that the overall condition of South Africa's environment was deteriorating and that some sectors were in a critical condition.
"To illustrate, a large part of Asgisa is premised on expanding irrigation schemes, developing extensive biofuel crops and bulk water supply schemes in a water-scarce country where the focus should be on catchment management and improved water resource management," the organisations said.
"The environmental sector is dismissed in Asgisa as 'unnecessarily hampering' growth. Instead, as the outlook report clearly shows, it should be recognised that protecting the health of the environment, ensuring ongoing ecosystem functioning and halting biodiversity loss is the only way that all South Africans will enjoy a healthy and sustainable future.
"This does, however, require innovative thinking and brave leadership to propose an alternative development agenda, instead of relentlessly pursuing current development plans at all costs."
The report provided a critical analysis of the state of South Africa's natural resource base and represented "independent, objective and scientifically credible" reviews of the opportunities and constraints to growth and development posed by this resource base, the organisations said.
It indicated clearly that the time for action was "now", the organisations continued.
The "boom" in the South African economy since the 1990s had been realised at the cost of an increased average "ecological footprint" of South Africans consuming more resources, despite the fact that many still lived in poverty.
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"It can no longer be business as usual in South Africa. Consumptive patterns are unsustainable, but it seems that the general political and social climate in South Africa is instead supporting a 'get rich at all costs' approach".
The national Environment Department's targets for biodiversity conservation, ecosystem protection and resource management could not be met if these conflicted with targets in other sectors such as mining and water provision through "often inappropriate" bulk water provision schemes.
"How can the Environment Department effectively conserve the environment when faced with competing agendas by the departments of Water Affairs and Forestry, Agriculture, Mineral and Energy, and so on?" the report asks.
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