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The Democratic Alliance welcomes the creation of a task team from the Department of Environmental Affairs and the Department of Mineral Resources to investigate mining in sensitive areas. The Minister of Mineral Resources and the Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs apparently met last week to begin drafting a definition of what a "sensitive area" with regards to mining activities is and where they are located. This decision follows the Minister of Water Affairs raising questions about the granting of a mining right 7km from the Mapungubwe World Heritage site in February this year. Her Department strongly opposed this mining right, but according to legislation as it stands, she has no power to stop the right being granted, as mining authorisations are the competence of the Minister of Mineral Resources.

The DA has long called for increased co-operative governance initiatives between these two departments. The Department of Mineral Resources has a record of granting a significant number of mining rights in areas that cannot handle the impacts of mining, most notably on water resources. In September 2009, the DA wrote to the Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs and asked her to create a mining advisory forum. She responded that she could not proceed with any initiative of this sort unless it was an initiative of both departments. The DA therefore calls on the two Departments to extend this project beyond simply a task team, and to formalise a mining advisory forum with a specific focus on the effects of mining on the environment. The discussion on what is a sensitive area should not be contained only in government. It should be thrown open to stakeholders from civil society, including farming and environmental organisations.

Further, determining where the so-called sensitive environments are should be based on a rigorous and open assessment. The use of Environmental Management Frameworks is best suited for this purpose as they consider the state of the environment over large areas, and are best suited to determining the cumulative effects of particular activities. Environmental Management Frameworks were included as a specified management tool in the last National Environmental Management Act. With this is in mind, there needs to be an assessment of water catchments in South Africa, to determine the maximum number of mines that can operate in each catchment without degrading the water quality. The new relationship between the Departments must also extend to improving the system around the granting of water use licences to mines. Currently there are 125 mines operating without water licences which is a contravention of the National Water Act. The Departments are currently permitting this to happen, despite attempts to deal with the backlog of licences.

The DA will ask parliamentary questions on this new initiative by the two Departments in order to get greater clarity on its goals and methodology.