Centre for Environmental Rights – Advancing Environmental Rights in South Africa

On Friday, 6 September 2013, a number of civil society groups made three separate written submissions to the MPRDA Amendment Bill, focusing on three issues:

1. Environment authorities are more appropriately placed to consider, issue and ensure compliance with environmental authorisations for mining activities by Centre for Environmental Rights, Endangered Wildlife Trust, WWF-SA, BirdLife South Africa, groundWork, Conservation South Africa, Greenpeace Africa and Prof Tracy Humby, University of the Witwatersrand School of Law.
2. The Bill does not make adequate provision for consultation with parties interested in and affected by mining activities, or for access to information by those parties, and therefore fails to give effect to the Constitutional rights to fair administrative action and access to information by Earthlife Africa Johannesburg Branch, groundWork, Centre for Environmental Rights, Environmental Monitoring Group and Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance.
3. Closure, rehabilitation and financial provision (section 43 of the Act) by Conservation South Africa, Centre for Environmental Rights, WWF-SA, Federation for a Sustainable Environment, groundWork and Mark Botha (private consultant on offsets and ecological provision to mining companies). The annexure to this submission is WWF-SA’s 2012 report Financial Provisions for Rehabilitation and Closure in South African Mining,

You can also read the submissions on the Bill made by the Mining and Environmental Justice Community Network (MEJCON-SA). In their submission, MEJCON-SA provides examples and case studies of their experiences of the regulation of mining across the country.

See also the CER’s own comments on the Bill, dealing with problems around consultation for the MPRDA Amendment Bill, what appears to be drafting errors in the Bill (Annexure B), and detailed clause-by-clause comments on the Bill to the extent that these relate to environmental rights (Annexure C). Annexure A to this set of comments is a letter to the Minister of Mineral Resources in April 2011.

Public hearings on the Bill are scheduled to start on 11 September 2013.