Fight to save the Mapungubwe World Heritage site intensifies

12 May 2010

The fight to protect the Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape from coal mining heated up this week with the submission of an appeal against the mine by some of the leading non¬governmental organisations in South Africa. Australian company Coal of Africa Limited (CoAL) was recently given the go ahead to begin construction of an opencast and underground coal mine within less than 6km from the borders of the Mapungubwe National Park and adjacent to the World Heritage Site, with the approval of the Environmental Management Plan for the proposed Vele Colliery.

The appeal was lodged by the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), the Peace Parks Foundation (PPF), the Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists (ASAPA), the Mapungubwe Action Group (MAG), the Wilderness Foundation South Africa (the WFSA), the World Wide Fund for Nature South Africa (the WWF) and BirdLife South Africa (BLSA). The appellants are being represented by the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand and include organisations whose objects and purposes involve the protection and maintenance of the environmental integrity of the area in and around Mapungubwe for current and future generations as it relates to the natural habitat, ecosystems, cultural heritage and related aspects of the environment.

In addition, the appellants believe it to be in the greater public interest to have submitted this appeal in order to address the serious shortcomings of the Environmental Management Programme (EMP) and to attempt to prevent further damage to this environmentally sensitive and culturally important environment for all South Africans. In addition to the appeal lodged, the appellants further appealed to the Minister of Mineral Resources to exercise her powers in terms of section 103(4)(b) of the Mining and Petroleum Resources Development Act to suspend the right to mine pending the outcome of this appeal.

The appeal was brought on the grounds that the EMP submitted by CoAL is deficient and that the approval of the EMP is unlawful and invalid because it purports to authorise conduct which is prohibited and unlawful in terms of the National Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act, 57 of 2003. Specifically, the EMP omits to consider certain consequences of mining in the area; misrepresents the true consequences of mining in the area; misrepresents the true impact of the consequences of mining in the area it identifies; and is premised on fundamentally erroneous assumptions regarding the nature of the mining to be done, the appropriate methods of evaluating its impact and the possibility of effectively managing or mitigating such impacts.

Areas of major concern to the appellants include concerns for the sensitive landscapes in and around of the mining area; the statutory prohibition against mining on those portions of the mining area that have been proclaimed nature reserves; the archaeological and other heritage resources affected by the mining; the impact on biodiversity and specifically on habitat, ecosystems and various species in the mining area; the impact on the quantity and quality of water resources; the noise and dust pollution that will be caused by mining; and the impact on the socio‐economic conditions of persons affected by the mining operations, including such persons’ rights, under section 24(a) of the Constitution, to an environment that is not harmful to their health and well‐being. Furthermore, concern has been raised for the failure of the EMP approval process to comply with the public consultation required in terms of the Act in that relevant persons and communities, including affected parties in Zimbabwe and Botswana (which border this mine) were either ignored or their specific concerns ignored, or they were not consulted at all when they should have been.

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