The Custodian Project

Chapter 5 of NEMA provides for integrated environmental management.  The EIA regulations were one tool, drafted and revised over a number of iterations, that attempted to regulate developmental activities with an impact on the environment. While NEMA envisaged a number of tools to assess the full range of policies, programmes and activities, the EIA has been inappropriately used as a “one size fits all” approach.

For this subtheme, the challenge is to provide for a strategy that recognises the environmental management sector needs to transform in line with the country’s demographic profile, and that the sector needs to reflect the diversity and gender equity of the country, in order to ensure biases of the past are rectified and that the sector supports the environmental development of all population groups.

This subtheme report focuses particularly on demographic representivity and gender representivity within EIA&M and was aimed at developing recommendations to promote the meaningful participation of previously disadvantaged population groups.

Legislation and policy context

This section provides a short summary of some of the legal and policy context for the transformation of the country.

Context for community involvement in sustainable development:

The National Environmental Management Act (NEMA) chapter1 section 2 has the following principles that are legally binding on all EIAs or other environmental management processes.   Principles relating specifically to transformation are:

Principles

(1) The principles set out in this section apply throughout the Republic to the actions of all organs of state that may significantly affect the environment and-

(a) shall apply alongside all other appropriate and relevant considerations, including the State's responsibility to respect, protect, promote and fulfil the social and economic rights in Chapter 2 of the Constitution and in particular the basic needs of categories of persons disadvantaged by unfair discrimination;

(c) Environmental justice must be pursued so that adverse environmental impacts shall not be distributed in such a manner as to unfairly discriminate against any person, particularly vulnerable and disadvantaged persons.

(d) Equitable access to environmental resources, benefits and services to meet basic human needs and ensure human well-being must be pursued and special measures may be taken to ensure access thereto by categories of persons disadvantaged by unfair discrimination.

(f) The participation of all interested and affected parties in environmental governance must be promoted, and all people must have the opportunity to develop the understanding, skills and capacity necessary for achieving equitable and effective participation, and participation by vulnerable and disadvantaged persons must be ensured.

(h) Community wellbeing and empowerment must be promoted through environmental education, the raising of environmental awareness, the sharing of knowledge and experience and other appropriate means.

This Act came into force in 1998, and it is clear that the intention of the law was to ensure the participation of all citizens, including disadvantaged individuals.

Context of the transformation of private sector:

Section 9 of the Constitution deals with equality:

• 9(1) Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law
• 9(2) Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms. To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken.

The relevant policy and legislation in terms of economic equality is:

• the Strategy for Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (Strategy) in March 2003;
• the Code of Good Practice (Code), which is an explanation of the approach to be adopted by government in the measurement of BEE compliance; and
• the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act 2003 (Act No. 53 of 2003) (the BEE Act) which was passed into law on 6 January 2004

• the final Codes of Good Practice on Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment which were promulgamated on 9 February 2007.

The Strategy and Code are not legally binding documents but give a clear indication of government's current policy in relation to BEE. Government defines BEE as having three separate, but integrated, contexts:

• Direct empowerment - the promotion of ownership and control by black persons over the South African economy, measured by ownership and management
• Human resource development
• Indirect empowerment - criteria relating to procurement sourced from black-empowered or black-owned businesses, as well as enterprise development through investment in, and joint ventures with, black-empowered or black-owned businesses.
• The BEE Act empowers the Minister of Trade and Industry to issue codes of good practice to be applied in determining the qualification criteria for granting licences, concessions and other authorizations under any law, in developing preferential procurement policies for government and the public sector, and in defining the qualification criteria for the sale of state-owned enterprises and the establishment of public private partnerships[1].

They are also intended to establish targets and weightings for the purpose of measuring BEE compliance.

A black-owned enterprise is defined as being a business that is ‘50.1% owned by black persons and where there is substantial management control’. These strategies are focused mainly on state interventions in the economy and are aimed at transforming the ownership of business[2], however the Codes of Good Practice require that all entities operating in the South African economy make a contribution towards the objectives of Broad - Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE).[3]

The BEE legislation is supported and functions in conjunction with various other forms of Legislation, including the Employment Equity Act, Skills Development Act, Preferential Procurement Framework and others.The Employment Equity Act, 1998 (Act No 55 of 1998 ) identifies three areas of discrimination: gender, race and disability and provides for the implementation of affirmative action measures designed to address the disadvantages in employment faced by particular categories of employees in order to ensure their equitable representation at all job levels in designated workplaces.

Implementing employment equity involves two key initiatives:

• Eliminating unfair discrimination in human resource policies and practices in the workplace; and
• Designing and implementing affirmative action measures to achieve equitable representation of designated groups in all  occupational categories and levels in the workplace

“The law states that in determining whether an employer is implementing employment equity in compliance with this Act, the Director-General or any person or body applying this Act must amongst other factors, take into account the 'demographic profile of the national and regional economically active population (EAP),”(President Jacob Zuma, clarifying the intention of the Employment Equity Amendment Bill, which will allow employers to be free to choose whether to target regional or national demographics but this is still in the process of amendment).[4]

Context of the transformation of government:

The legislation and policy context for government transformation is as follows:

1. According to the White Paper on the Transformation of the Public Service (WPTPS), 1995:

• Within four years all departmental establishments must endeavour to be at least 50% black at management level
• During the same period at least 30% of new recruits to the middle and senior management echelons should be women
• Within ten years, people with disabilities should comprise 2% of public service personnel

2. White Paper on Affirmative Action in the Public Service, 1998 re-emphasises the meeting of targets as outlined in the WPTPS

Context of transformation of women

Gender equality is one of the cornerstones of the South African Bill of Rights (Chapter 2) as encapsulated mainly in Clause 9(1),(3), Chapter 2 which state that everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law; the state may not discriminate against anyone on the grounds of race, age, gender sex, pregnancy, marital status…”.

South Africa’s National Policy Framework on Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality (NPFGW) was drawn up by The Office on the Status of Women and was adopted by Cabinet in December 2000. The NPFGW develops the values and principles which underpin the National Gender Programme and calls upon all national Departments to develop sectoral gender policy guidelines to translate the national imperatives for women’s empowerment and gender equality into their sector policies, programmes and activities.

South Africa is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) 1979, the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa; the Beijing Platform of Action; Millennium Development Goals – Goal 7, Target 9. These conventions and agreements commit South Africa to end discrimination against women in all forms and to incorporate the principle of equality of men and women in their legal system.

The Department of Science and Technology addresses gender equality in its founding document - The S&T White Paper.

The Business Women’s Association (BWASA) 2009 census of women leaders in government, state-owned enterprises and JSE-listed companies shows that government is ahead when it comes to gender representivity in the workplace. South Africa has in fact one of the highest rates worldwide of women in public office at all levels of government and administration (BWASA 2009). But despite the progressive policies and strategies, some serious obstacles to realize gender and race equality remain (Bertelsmann Stiftung & CAP 2010).[5]

Context of the transformation of education:

The Constitution of South Africa, adopted in 1996, recognises the need to heal the divisions of the past and, through the Bill of Rights, invokes the notion of redress for past inequities. The White Paper on Higher Education (1997), the Higher Education Act (1997) and the National Plan on Higher Education (2001) require higher education institutions to address past inequities through various processes of redress and development and to address the country’s high-level human resource needs.

Despite strong efforts at reform and improvement, South African schools and universities still have discrepancies in quality (HSRC 2009). Dropout rates in schools and universities are high, due to under-qualified teachers to capacity problems to poverty and hunger of children (Bertelsmann & Cap 2010, HSRC 2009) and thus there are few people adequately prepared for university. “In a labour market where there is an oversupply of unskilled labor and a shortage of skilled labor, the education system (primary, secondary and tertiary) is not producing the skills that the economy requires.” (Bertelsmann & CAP 2010).

The World Economic Forum found that whilst South African universities rated strongly on research and development spending accompanied by strong collaboration between universities and the business sector in innovation (both ranked 28th), the report cautioned that the country’s innovative potential could be at risk with a university enrollment rate of only 15 percent, or 93rd overall. (Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009 of the World Economic Forum (WEF)).

In terms of gender transformation, female enrollments in all higher education institutions have increased considerably (National Innovation for Science Council 2010). However, female students remain underrepresented in the fields of science, engineering and technology[6]. The National Strategy for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education is the flagship strategy of the Department of Education to increase the number of mathematics, science, and technology graduates in response to the socioeconomic needs of South Africa and to build human resources. It aims to increase the skills and enrolment of students in South Africa in these disciplines.

The Biodiversity Human Capital Development Programme (BHCDP) has received R8.5 million from the Lewis foundation to:

•        to increase the number of talented black South Africans attracted to working in this sector

•        to improve the quality, levels and relevance of skills for the sector

•        to improve retention and effective deployment of suitable individuals in the sector and

•        to create enabling macro-conditions for skills planning, development and evaluation.

They focus on unraveling the “hardships of graduates in life sciences who want to have a masters or higher degree” and how trained students on leaving tertiary institutions find “a lack of opportunities, mentorship, vacation work or even internships. With no experience, it is difficult to find a job in the environmental sector.”

An important initiative to keep talent within the biodiversity sector is to find resources to upskill professionals who are already in this sector. The Green Paper on Skills Development defined learnerships as a mechanism to facilitate linkages between a structured learning environment and the place of work, so that graduates who obtain a qualification, are ready to enter the world of work. While it was argued in the Green Paper that the establishment of learnerships had to be demand driven, there was nothing to prevent the creation of incentives to set the process into motion. As was indicated in the Green Paper, the Act reaffirms the need to incorporate structured learning with practical work experience. The key vehicles identified to drive the process are the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs). The Skills Development Levy is a levy that each employer has to pay over to SARS. It is compulsory if their wage bill is more than R500000 for the year and voluntary if their wage bill is less for the year. The levy is 1% of the total wage bill and it does not get deducted from the employee.

Context for transformation in the environmental NGO sector.

Under Apartheid South Africa, Conservation organisations tended to be white managed and owned and largely concerned with biodiversity conservation issues.  Most of these historically white conservation style organisations have been around for more than 50 years.  Examples include WESSA, WWF and EWT.

During the 1980’s, issues of environmental justice came to the fore, with marginalised communities protesting at the pollution burden they had to bear.  This era was the beginning of organisations such as Earthlife Africa, and GroundWork that focused on the pollution and human issues, rather than the traditional conservation issues.

Twenty years later, WESSA now has a black woman CEO – Mumsie Gumede, while WWF is headed by white males and EWT by white females but the focus of these organizations has shifted and their programmes do focus on broader conservation/human development questions.

The 1990’s saw the birth of environmental networks focused on marginalised communities.  The Environmental Justice Networking Forum (EJNF) started during this time.  In 2011, there are a number of environmental issue based networks that bring NGOs and CBOs together: the Fynbos Forum, the Adaptation network, the Climate Justice Now Network and the Energy Caucus and Water Caucus (the last two are national caucuses that meet regularly to exchange views on different current environmental topics) and a few of the national civil society networks.  Most of the networks are dominated by community activists drawn from marginalised communities.

However, in terms of influence in policy or project decisions, the larger traditional organisations dominate.

On the ground

Inequality

In the South African context, the majority of the population is considered historically disadvantaged, for example, the so-called ‘Blacks’ only gained the vote in 1994.  The majority of South Africa’s poor and vulnerable population is still “black” (under the old apartheid classification), with “black” women being particularly affected, and there is a wealth of literature to support this. South Africa’s National Party government developed the Apartheid system of legal racial segregation between 1943 and 1993, and this classified the country’s inhabitants as “Black”, “White”, “Coloured” or “Indian”. The Coloured group included people of Khoisan, Malaysian, Griqua, Indian and Chinese origin (Health and Demographic survey ref).The level of public sector service and infrastructure provided to white people and that offered to the black/non-white population is widely disparate.[7]

Although this report agrees in principle with the principle of human dignity, or as UCT’s EE policy[8] specifically states: “In advancing employment equity, we recognize and respect the right to both dignity and self-determined identity. Accordingly, and where possible given the requirements of prevailing legislation, we will uphold the rights of individuals not to be publicly categorized by race, gender or disability against their will”, it was not possible within the ToR of this study not to use these terms. Unfortunately in order to understand the demographic representivity within the EIA&M field we will need to use these classifications (repealed in 1991) within the methodology, in order to fully determine whether the industry has transformed or not. It is necessary to use the classification of these population groups in order to monitor whether progress has been made in reducing the historic socio-economic inequalities between population groups.

Currently the effects of Apartheid still influence education and poverty levels within the country. According to Statistics SA[9] 22.3% of Blacks aged 20 and over have received no schooling, 18.5% have had some primary school, 6.9% have completed only primary school, 30.4% have had some high school education, 16.8% have finished only high school, and 5.2% have an education higher than the high school level. The unemployment rate of the economically able Black population (aged 15–65 years) is high at 28.1% and those employed typically earn R12,073/year. Black females get less income than Black males.

In contrast, Statistics South Africa estimates that 1.4% of Whites aged 20 and over have received no schooling, 1.2% have had no more than some primary schooling, 0.8% have completed only primary school, 40.9% have finished only high school, and 29.8% have an education higher than the high-school level. The unemployment rate of the White population aged 15–65 is 4.1%. The median annual income of White working adults aged 15–65 is ZAR 65,405. White males have a median annual income of ZAR 81,701 versus ZAR 52,392 for White females.

Population distribution is also uneven in a spatial dimension. In 1995 black South Africans formed a majority in all provinces except the Western Cape, (where they made up 20 percent of the population). Cities were predominantly white, and the townships and squatter areas that ringed the cities were predominantly black.

Gender:

There are many gender based inequalities in South African society as a result of political history, forced removals, migrant workers and cultural identities (SADHS 2008).

The gender ratio of South Africa population between 15-64 years is 1.02 male(s)/female (StatsSA 2007).

Current demographic profile of South Africa:

Statistics South Africa’s mid 2010 population estimates are that the total country population stands at 49.9 million, with the apartheid categories racial breakdown as follows:

Africans – 79.4%

Whites – 9.2%

Coloured – 8.8%

Indian/Asian – 2.6%

Demographic profile of the provinces of South Africa in percentages

According to the demographic profile within provinces, Limpopo, Mpumulanga and North West have a high Black population; and the biggest populations of Whites occur in the Western Cape and Gauteng. The biggest populations of Coloureds occur in the Northern and Western Cape. The greatest population of Asians in the country occurs in KwaZulu Natal.

Demographic profile of the Economically Active population

According to the Employment Equity Commission representivity must equate to the Economically Active portion of the population (currently it refers to both regional and national demography but the Amendment Act stipulates that will in the future just the term Economically active population will be used for a reference), which is represented in the Table above.

[1] http://www.bwasa.co.za/Portals/4/docs/archive/BEE-%20notes%20.pdf

[2] http://www.bertelsmann-transformation-index.de/fileadmin/pdf/Gutachten_BTI2010/ESA/South_Africa.pdf

[3] http://www.dti.gov.za/bee/EE_guidlines.pdf

[4] http://www.timeslive.co.za/Politics/article972931.ece/Zuma-clarifies-employment-equity-bill

[5] http://www.bertelsmann-transformation-index.de/fileadmin/pdf/Gutachten_BTI2010/ESA/South_Africa.pdf

[6] http://www.nacinnovation.biz/wp-content/uploads/Taking-Stock-Policy-Interventions-and-Impact-in-the-STI-Dr-Romilla-Maharaj.pdf

[7] http://www.fanews.co.za/article.asp?Front_Page_Features;25,Stokes_Stage;1145,Demographeid_Reengineering_South_Africas_population_demographics;9155

[8] http://www.uct.ac.za/downloads/uct.ac.za/about/policies/eepolicy.pdf

[9] http://www.statssa.gov.za