POPO MOLEFE'S PRESENTATION ON WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL DAY

ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT IN THE NORTH WEST PROVINCE Presentation given at WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY CELEBRATIONS Bakgatla Gate, Pilanesberg National Park 5 June 1995 By P S MOLEFE The Honourable Premier North West Province Honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen I take this opportunity to welcome you on this landmark occasion.

Today is a truly historic occassion for us in South Africa. In the first instance, it is historic because South Africa has been chosen as the host country for the World Environment Day ceremonies together with the United Nations 50th Anniversary Celebrations. Secondly, it is the first real opportunity for a liberated and truly democratic South Africa to fully participate as one nation in these global celebrations. Even now, our celebrations across the country are being televised all over the world.

World Environment Day was initiated by the United Nations in 1972 and South Africa has participated in them since 1973, however, this is the first time we have been selected as the host nation.

One of the major purposes of these World Environment Day celebrations is to focus the attention of all communities across the world on the environmental crises that face us. The world's environmental problems are so pressing that they demand urgent and united action right now.

To this end the international slogan for the World Environment Day is - We the people, united for a healthy environment.

To elaborate on this theme I would like to briefly describe some elements of the environmental crisis as it affects us in South Africa, and then I would like to outline my governments' vision as how this crisis can be addressed by us, the people. I would also like to describe some of the progress that has been made already towards achieving some solutions. THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS In describing the nature of the environmental crisis that faces every person in the world, I would like to point out in a very broad sense, the two major areas of concern are:

• Firstly, the very natural resources that we ultimately rely on for life are slowly, but surely, being destroyed, poisoned or used up. For example: - The fertile soil of our land, which is vital to produce food for our people is being eroded away and washed into the sea or it ends up in our water storage dams. In South Africa alone, we are losing up to 200 million tons of soil every year directly as a result of bad land management by our people. Further, that soil which is left is being polluted by excessive and unsustainable use of various chemicals. - We do not have enough water in our land to maintain our future demands. Abundant clean and healthy natural water is a thing of the past. The largest portion of our scarce water resources is being used, wasted and polluted by large commercial, mining, industrial and agricultural enterprises. And, the cost of cleaning water for human consumption is huge. - The air that we breathe is being poisoned by the very same large commercial, mining, industrial and agricultural enterprises. The smog created in our townships from the coal that our people are forced to use for cooking and heating is also a great problem to our Government. The toll that is paid for this pollution is felt in the poor health of our people and the large health budget.

- The global destruction of our environment is resulting in an accelerated rate of extinction of other forms of animal, insect and plant life - which we call biodiversity. We rely on the many different kinds of plants and animals to maintain our quality of life and it's future improvement. For example, it is these other forms of life which assists in generating new soil from rocks, which make the soil fertile, and which clean and recycle our water and air. In addition, this biodiversity resource has great potential for the future; for example, to supply us with new highly productive drought resistant food crops, or even a cure for AIDS or new commercial products and production processes. Yet, we are rapidly destroying our biodiversity resource. - On a more global scale, the cumulative effect of the environmental destruction, pollution and resource depletion that I have just described, results in the destruction and deterioration of other natural processes which ultimately supports life on earth. Examples of these large scale environmental problems may be; - changes in our climate patterns (in South Africa we seem to be having droughts more frequently); - acid rain; - the hole in the ozone layer and global warming caused by air pollution. In coming to a South African solution to these problems which are also being being experienced all over the world, I have to address my comments to some of the specific and fundamental causes of the environmental problems that we face in South Africa.

At the outset I have state that we, the people, have inherited what I would like to call a huge "environmental debt" as a legacy of the former apartheid regime. To be more specific in this regard:

• The apartheid policies forced over 80% of the people to eke out a subsistence level living on just over 13% of the land. Most of that land having marginal potential anyway. Because of the hopelessness of this situation, most of the able bodied men and women were forced to participate in the migrant labour system, which causes vast social hardship and the breakdown of families in our society.
• The poor education system not only created a nation with high levels of illiteracy, but also an environmentally illiterate nation.
• Economic and social segregation policies created a downward spiral of poverty and environmental degradation. Poor people were forced to overuse those natural resources around them, such as firewood for fuel, to supply basic needs - degrading the environment. In turn the degraded environment develops less capacity to supply the needs of the people. The situation becomes progressively worse over time with more and more people becoming poverty stricken. These unfortunate people are then forced to rely on an environment that is less and less able to supply their needs.
• All the political, economic and social segregation policies created a vast group of people without an opportunity to escape the poverty trap. As such, these people were forced to overuse those natural environmental resources available to them just to survive today and let tomorrow take care of itself. Apartheid not only robbed the people of the opportunity to gain access to resources but also robbed them of their traditional knowledge of how to use available natural resources. It also denied them access to modern knowledge and power which would have given them effective control over resources.
• Further, the system created minority controlled commercial, mining, industrial and agricultural sectors with an extraordinary amount of political influence and power. These sectors formed powerful vested interest blocks which prevented any effective environmental management from takin place. Implementation of sustainable environmental management was seen as a hinderance to short term gain.
• The result of this situation is that the former government's Environmental Management Agencies were regarded as irrelevant or unimportant and were not allocated sufficient resources to carry out their tasks. For example, although the Ministry of Environmental Affairs was able to formulate some national environmental control measures on paper they never had the political power or the capacity on the ground to enforce these.
• Another result of the system was that, of the small amount of resources allocated to environmental management the major portion went to various nature conservation agencies, who were charged with the very important task of conserving our iodiversity resource, mainly through the creation of conservation reserves and parks. This has unfortunately created the general impression among our people that good environmental conservation only happens inside our parks.
• Further, the land for parks was often only made available by the forced removal of the, marginalised communities that lived there. Then once the parks were created it appeared that only the rich minority could visit them. The end result of this situation was that parks and nature conservation were generally percieved by the people in a negative light. This is unfortunate because they are important functions of government, and technically they were reletively well done in terms of their primary objective - to conserve biodiversity. Fortunately for us those days are over, and we now need to move forward into a new era. A VISION OF A HEALTHY AND SAFE ENVIRONMENT FOR ALL PEOPLE. The ANC lead Government of National Unity has recognised the seriousness and urgency of this environmental crisis. With all the evidence of deteriorating environmental health, we are faced with the prospect that the "new South Africa's" hopes and dreams for success could be undermined by collapsing soil, water, air and biological resources.

IT IS CLEAR THAT THERE WILL BE NO SUSTAINED POLITICAL SETTLEMENT WITHOUT SUSTAINED ECONOMIC GROWTH, AND NO SUSTAINED ECONOMIC GROWTH WITHOUT WISE AND SUSTAINED ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT. A PROSPEROUS ECONOMY CANNOT BE BUILT ON A BANKRUPT ENVIRONMENT. Furthermore, our constitution states that every person has the fundamental human right to an environment not detrimental to his or her health.

For these reasons, the implementation of sound environmental management practices are high on the agenda of my government, and the new environmental management policies will be carried forward to all levels of government and society.

Accordingly, our vision is to attack the fundamental causes of the deterioration in environmental health. An integrated national policy and programme to achieve this is clearly outlined in the RDP. Environmental issues are referred to throughout the RDP as a fundamental basis for achieving sustainable development and improving quality of life.

The fundamental issues and priorities are to address;

• firstly, the abnormally high levels of poverty in South Africa.
• secondly, the culture of unequal and unsustainable use and management of environmental resources, specifically created by the problem of unequal access to resources and opportunities; the people's lack of knowledge about sound environmental management; and the people's lack of power to determine the use and management of environmental resources.
• thirdly, the lack of strong, independent and accountable capacity in government and communities to control commercial, mining, industrial, agricultural and other enterprises and activities that have short term gain objectives but long term environmental costs and consequences. As outlined in the RDP, policy and legislation that we have enacted since the elections last year, intends to:
• Attack poverty with all the means at our disposal. This includes; - Meeting basic human needs such as; addressing the housing crisis; resolving the energy problems through electrification and other means; reducing environmental pressure on the land through the land reform programme; address the water supply and sanitation problems of our people; address the social injustices created by the transport infrastructure and industry; address the inequitable health situation. - Building the economy through actions such as; creating jobs through public works programmes; stimulating, reorienting and where necessary restructuring the various sectors of the economy to address distributive justice, social and environmental sustainability issues and; facilitating our international participation and competitiveness in the global economy.

We also intend to address the culture of unequal and unsustainable use and management of environmental resources through; - Transforming our government, economic and civil society structures to allow full public participation which will ensure the equitable access to resources and opportunities and, secondly, the transparency, openess and accountability requied by the public to empower them to take ownership of their environmental resources and ultimately determine there use and management. - Developing our human resources through a reform formal and non-formal education system which includes a thorough programme of environmental education.

• In order to address the problem of independent "on the ground" capacity to effectively manage the environment, the government has assigned the responsibility for facilitating and operating sound environmental management to the Provinces. The Provinces are responsible for building strong, integrated and accountable environmental management capacity close to the people, and must ensure that this management is well coordinated within the framework of National Policy. This is in accordance with our new constitution and consistent with the principle of bringing government to the people. These then are the essential elements of my governments vision for united action towards achieving a safe, clean, healthy and wisely managed environment as the basis for sustained peace and prosperity for all our people in this province. PROGRESS WE HAVE MADE TOWARDS THIS VISION One may ask what progress have we made towards this vision in the year since my government was elected?

With regard to our all out attack on poverty through efforts to meet basic human needs and build an equitable economy many initiatives have been started, for example;

• Our low cost housing financial arrangements for people in the low income bracket and projects in the Province.
• Our land reform programmes such as the restoration of the Bakubung land in the Boons area.
• Our extensive electrification programme
• Our province wide plan to supply water to communities.
• We have substantially expanded our network of primary health care facilities into communities and there is free health care for pregnant women and children under the age of six.
• We have initiated many public works programmes to address infrastructural needs in the province using a small contractor approach which also creates jobs, opportunities and skills for our people. With regard to our efforts to address the culture of unequal and unsustainable use and management of environmental resources through transforming our government, economic and civil society structures to facilitate full public participation and reforming our education system. The following initiatives are already underway;
• The civil service systems and structures including those of education are currently being reconstructed to integrate the 3 previous administrations that existed in the Province and to ensure that they deliver services which reflect the policies and makeup of our new South Africa. Although we have achieved real progress in this regard, this task is proving to be longer and more difficult than was originally anticipated.

With regard to our efforts to build strong, integrated but independent and accountable "on the ground" capacity in government and communities to facilitate the wise management of the environment, my government has implemented the following initiatives:

• The National government together with the Provinces have initiated processes to participatively develop National Environmental Policy which will culminate in the publication of a White Paper towards the end of the year. It is this policy which will guide the operations of our Provincial environmental management capacity that is currently being developed.
• Under the able leadership of our honourable MEC Rev. J O Tselapedi the Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs is being developed.
• This department is specifically building capacity to address environmental management issues in an integrated, independent and accountable way. Specifically, to; - Facilitate the delivery of holistic environmental education programmes. - To deliver environmental management extension and support programmes to communities in terms of building their capacity to implement waste, litter, sanitation, energy, pollution and other environmental management programmes. - To deliver empowering and participative environmental resource protection service to communities, which will be aimed at building community capacity to make wise and informed decisions about environmental resource use and development decisions within the national and provincial policy framework.
• The first in a series of public workshops has already been held which will hopefully result in the formation of a Provincial Public Environmental Forum to advise government on environmental management issues, policy and the performance of its' civil service in this respect. ACTION INTO THE FUTURE I do not pretend that our work of putting our vision for a relevant environmental management system in the North West Province into action is complete. However, much progress has been made and it is gathering momentum. CONCLUSION In conclusion I would like to quote our State President Nelson Mandela who stated in August 1993 that "Environmental concerns can unite South Africa, going beyond racial, political and economic barriers. In addition to the crisis in education, housing, employment and a host of other problems, the new democracy will be left with apartheid's environmental legacy. (Unfortunately) it is often poor communities that are the victims of government's weak environmental policies."

My government is determined to address this situation.