The article lists the problems identified by Sean O'Beirne of SE Solutions in the investigation of monitoring and enforcement.
Generally, the monitoring, reporting and enforcement stages in the management cycle are poorly attended to. The particular are highlighted here:
• Impacts of activities on the environment are inadequately identified. The potential impacts are required to be identified at the stage of the project when uncertainty is high.
• There is no mechanism which requires reassessment of impacts or the optimisation of mitigation/rehabilitation as certainty improves.
• There is no regulatory mechanism for revisiting the impacts that have manifested differently to what was described in the assessment; there is no adaptive measure required for the environmental management programme/plan to respond to different impacts.
• Public participation is too limited. In spite of the I&APs and the public having to live with the impacts, there is no mechanism for continued interaction and input (of consequence) after authorisation.
• Environmental monitoring committees (EMC) are ineffectual because they are poorly attended, authorities have unclear mandates, documentation is not adequately reviewed in preparation, there is no action taken on reported transgressions of the authorisation conditions, the EMP and the law.
• There is no process or procedure which requires reaction to environmental reporting.
• It is unclear which agency may take enforcement actions when there is a contravention of an Act or condition of authorisation which is the domain of another agency e.g contravention of Water Act.
• Sanction is clumsy, slow and inappropriate to the severity of the infraction.
• The authorisation makes the assumption that the environment and the context for the activities remain unchanged (i.e. both the diligence of the self-regulation and the receiving environment are assumed to be unchanging)
• Environmental Management Programmes/Plans are inadequate, with scant attention to how the management and mitigation requirements would be implemented, the criteria for review in changing circumstance, and outcomes are vaguely defined, if at all.
• The legally enforceable status of the Environmental Management Programmes/Plan is generally disregarded.
• Environmental reporting records are inadequate to allow infractions to be identified, and legal action to be taken.
• Developers are constrained in how they respond to environmental changes rather than being tightly bound to specific environmental indicators which monitor a desired outcome.
• Mining activities will remain materially outside the jurisdiction of the compliance and enforcement functions that are held within the DEA
• Effective monitoring and enforcement is hampered by the scale and numbers of activities which require compliance and enforcement functions.
• Inadequate capacity for compliance and enforcement at provincial government level and also possibly more importantly, at local authority level is obstacle.
• Authorisations are poorly drafted, lacking clarity and at times having contradictory requirements. This impedes enforcement.
• The function of compliance and enforcement may need to be extended to permits and licences.
• The process of assessment is reduced to administrative “ticking of boxes” which discredits the overall objective of reducing risks to the development and to the environment.