Prescription Or Participation?

Uncertainty over environmental management policy and a heavy-handed government approach are adversely affecting people and biodiversity.

- Nicholas James

A consortium of 14 organisations, representing people who rely on the sustainable use of biological resources, appeared recently before Parliament’s Portfolio Committee for Environmental Affairs to discuss proposed changes to the National Environmental Management Biodiversity Act (NEMBA).

Attorney Ian Cox, on behalf of the consortium, said that NEMBA and proposed amendments to it had systemic weaknesses due to the lack of a formally adopted biodiversity policy. He said that the draft biodiversity white paper of 1997 conflicted with South Africans’ environmental rights, as well as the environmental management principles enacted under the National Environmental Management Act.

Cox stressed that NEMBA was being applied without a formal policy in place.