Mining in or Close to Protected Areas

[Lisbeth]

Court pours cold water on Mpumalanga coal mine operations in critical source area

By John Yeld• 25 March 2021

Also read: https://www.africawild-forum.com/viewto ... 90#p535090


The Pretoria high court has stopped Uthaka Energy from starting to mine coal this week in the critical water source area of Mabiola, Mpumalanga. (Archive photo: supplied by GroundUp)

No mining will be permitted in critical water source area until legal challenges are settled.

First published by GroundUp.

In yet another turn in what is already a six-year legal battle, Uthaka Energy (Pty) Ltd, a coal-mining company, has been interdicted by the Pretoria high court from mining in one of South Africa’s critical water source areas.

A coalition of civil society organisations brought the urgent interdict application against Uthaka Energy (formerly known as Atha-Africa Ventures), a local subsidiary of India-based mining and minerals company Atha Group, which had planned to start operations at its Yzermyn underground coal mine at Mabola, Mpumalanga, this week. Read the court order here.

The proposed mine lies within a Strategic Water Source Area in the grasslands and wetlands of the Wakkerstroom area, one of only 22 areas that together produce more than half of South Africa’s freshwater requirements.

Until January this year, the proposed mining area was also included within the Mabola Protected Environment, a protected area declared under the Protected Areas Act in 2014.

Any mining within a formally protected area requires the joint permission of two cabinet ministers: the Minister of the Environment, Forestry & Fisheries and the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy.

However, after several flip-flops, Mpumalanga environment MEC Vusi Shongwe in January this year revoked the protected area status of Mabola, effectively allowing the proposed coal mine to proceed without the joint ministerial permissions.

The coalition has been working since 2015 to block the proposed mine, and to undo various approvals and permits already obtained by the mine. It has five court challenges pending and has announced that it will shortly bring a sixth – against Shongwe’s change of protected status of Mabola.

On 5 March, after Uthaka Energy had given notice of its intention to start mining (as required in terms of an earlier court ruling), the coalition brought the urgent interdict application in which it asked the court to block any mining until all its other legal challenges had been adjudicated.

In a founding affidavit by coalition member Nkwane Thobejane of the Mining and Environmental Justice Community Network of South Africa, the coalition argued that starting mining operations at Yzermyn would cause “irreparable harm to the wetlands, grasslands and other aspects of the environment”.

“It would also cause irreparable harm to the occupiers of the affected homestead and subsistence farmers … The applicants are justified in seeking an urgent interdict to prevent the harm to this highly sensitive area of environmental importance from materialising.”

In an answering affidavit, Uthaka Energy senior vice-president Praveer Tripathi argued that the mine had been authorised by all the relevant authorities and was at a stage where mining could lawfully start – “despite the barrage of litigation by the Applicants [the coalition] in which they sought for the past decade to delay and derail this development completely”.

Tripathi said the mine met all the requirements for a sustainable development “as contemplated by the Constitution”.

However, the court ruled in favour of the coalition and issued an order interdicting Uthaka Energy from conducting any mining activities and mining-related operations, other than the survey pegging of the surface infrastructure boundary of the mine and pegging to demarcate wetlands in terms of its approved plan.

The interdict will remain in force until the final determination of a series of reviews and appeals being brought by the coalition that include full judicial review applications of the mine’s water use licences, its mining right and its environmental authorisation.

In a statement after the interdict was granted, the coalition said it was “relieved that the court has granted a reprieve to allow proper judicial assessment of the legal proceedings underway before the environmental harm is caused”.

The coalition members are the Mining and Environmental Justice Communities Network of South Africa, groundWork, BirdLife South Africa, the Endangered Wildlife Trust, the Federation for a Sustainable Environment, the Association for Water and Rural Development (AWARD) and the Bench Marks Foundation, and they are represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights. DM

[Lisbeth]

Growing concern over Okavango oil exploration as community alleges shutout

by Jim Tan on 22 March 2021

• Public consultations are under way for 450 kilometers (280 miles) of seismic surveys, the next phase of oil exploration in northeastern Namibia.

• Critics say the consultations offer only limited public participation, preventing members of affected communities from attending or understanding the unfolding process.

• There is also concern that a series of incremental environmental impact assessments potentially obscures the full implications of ReconAfrica’s ultimate goal of oil production in this region, which may include fracking

.

Reconnaissance Energy Africa (ReconAfrica), a Canadian oil and gas company, has begun public consultations for the second phase of its controversial exploration activities in northeastern Namibia. Critics have raised concerns about the process, with questions over the limited size of the consultations, overly complicated presentations, and a lack of opportunity for stakeholder engagement.

“The company doing the exploration, ReconAfrica, is not an honest and reliable entity in our view,” said Chris Brown, CEO of the Namibian Chamber of Environment and former head of the Namibian Directorate of Environmental Affairs. “They have done all they can to avoid public meetings with technical people in Namibia and they needed to be bullied into holding meetings in Windhoek.”

ReconAfrica holds a license to explore a 25,000-square-kilometer (9,650-square-mile) area of northeastern Namibia. Stakeholder engagement sessions for the initial exploration phase, drilling of two test wells to the south of Rundu, took place in March and May 2019 and November 2020. These public consultations were similarly criticized, in particular because they were advertised primarily in English-language newspapers that few in the affected communities could read. According to a National Geographic report, ReconAfrica’s September 2020 press release stating the drilling would go ahead was the first time many in the area had heard about it.

The company began drilling the first of two test wells on Jan. 11, 2021, to establish the area’s potential for oil production. Drilling is now paused due to a broken drill bit at a depth of 300 meters (980 feet).

The next stage of exploring for oil will be 450 km (280 mi) of seismic surveys. Risk Based Solutions (RBS), a Namibian environmental consultancy, recently began a second environmental impact assessment (EIA) for this.


Map courtesy Recon Africa

RBS has held two stakeholder consultations so far, and both ReconAfrica and RBS have been strongly criticized for how these were conducted.

One consultation took place in Rundu on Jan. 22. Attendance was limited to 50 people for reasons of COVID-19 safety, according to ReconAfrica.

“Dr. [Sindila] Mwiya [owner of Risk Based Solutions] was not respectful at all during the consultation meeting,” said Adolf Muremi, chair of the Kavango East Farmers Union and one of those who attended.

The consultation lasted for two hours with only 30 minutes allowed for questions, after which the meeting was promptly ended.

“I asked [Mwiya] 11 questions which Dr Mwiya could not answer properly,” Muremi said. “In short, we were not consulted properly.”

Claire Preece, ReconAfrica’s spokesperson, told Mongabay the consultations have been a success with a largely positive response.

“Actually [local people] are very upset that outsiders and/or people who don’t have any knowledge of the area are making comments for them without their approval,” she said.

Max Muyemburuko chairs the Muduva Nyangana Conservancy, which sits in ReconAfrica’s oil exploration area.

In December and January, Muyemburuko visited eight communities in the area around Rundu, including Kawe, where the test drilling is taking place. He said there is widespread dissatisfaction with the public consultation process. According to Muyemburuko, ReconAfrica had held meetings in three of the communities, but the headmen and community members were not given a chance to share their views.

“The consultations did not reach the targeted community in the region due to the limited numbers and the presentation was not clear to the community representatives,” he said.

Muyemburuko attended January’s meeting in Rundu, but, frustrated by the limited time allowed for the community to ask questions, he later emailed questions directly to Mwiya.

In response, Mwiya wrote, “I am so shocked that in your right mind you think local people in the Kavango East and West regions do not know what they want in their lives … It’s very sad to see that people like you, Max Muyemburuko, who have zero experience or training in oil and gas exploration now want to be experts overnight.”

Frowin Becker, a doctoral candidate from Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand, who is currently conducting research in the Okavango Delta, attended a second public consultation in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, on Feb. 2.

“Claire Preece addressed the attendants in an incredibly confrontational manner from the very beginning,” he told Mongabay. “Their attitudes were deplorable to be frank, they launched the meeting in an overly defensive manner, which understandably offended the majority of the audience.”

Becker said much of the information presented was highly technical and poorly presented, leaving him struggling to understand it, even with his academic background. Muyemburuko said it would have been even harder to follow for many interested parties, especially in northeast Namibia, for whom English is not a first language.

Brown, an expert in Namibian environmental law who helped draft the environmental clauses in the country’s constitution, said that while ReconAfrica’s public consultations may meet the letter of the law, they do not answer to its spirit.

He said that for large — and controversial — projects, there is a responsibility for those engaging the public for environmental and social impact assessments to go beyond minimum requirements to ensure that consultations meet public expectations.

“ReconAfrica and their EIA consultants have failed miserably in this,” he said. “Indeed, they have given the strong impression that they are actively avoiding full public engagement.”


Aerial shot of river near Rundu, Namibia with small figures on the banks. Image by Patrik M. Loeff via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
River near Rundu, Namibia. Image by Patrik M. Loeff via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The limited scope of EIAs

ReconAfrica has also drawn criticism for focusing only on the environmental impacts of each stage of exploration separately and refusing to discuss the potential environmental implications of oil production, even though this is clearly the long-term goal.

One particularly contentious issue is whether ReconAfrica plans to use hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking. Environmentalists are concerned this could be a disaster in the highly interconnected watershed of the Okavango Delta.

Preece said “ReconAfrica’s focus is on conventional oil,” and has previously denied any plans to frack. However, the company’s marketing materials make regular references to “unconventional plays,” industry parlance for fracking. Mongabay asked Preece to unequivocally rule out fracking at any stage now or in the future: she has so far not responded on this point.

There are also other concerns over an incremental use of EIAs, said Morgan Hauptfleisch, an associate professor at the University of Namibia who focuses on environmental impact assessments.

“I fear that providing environmental clearance for exploration opens the authorising government to considerable risk were they to then refuse mining of product found through exploration,” he told Mongabay.

Brown said he’s concerned that Namibia is damaging its reputation by even allowing exploration in the KAZA, a 520,000-km2 (201,000-mi2) transboundary conservation initiative that straddles the border region between Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

“Oil and gas exploration is the antithesis of the [KAZA’s] green economy vision,” Brown said. “Many international and local bilateral and multilateral donors have invested significant resources in the KAZA … allowing oil and gas exploration in that area reflects a cynical approach by government of taking whatever they can whenever they can.”

The Namibian government has been largely supportive of ReconAfrica’s exploration, pointing to the development that potential oil production could provide. Mongabay reached out to the Namibian Ministry of Mines and Energy for this piece but did not receive a reply.

“The government has chosen their side already,” Muremi said. “They are defending ReconAfrica with nail and tooth at the expense of their countrymen.”

[Lisbeth]

Total’s Garden Route oil and gas extraction plans bode ill for rights of the area’s vulnerable communities

By Linda Arkert• 28 March 2021


Oil and gas extraction can lead to serious human rights abuses, particularly in Africa, says the writer. (Photo: mining.com / Wikipedia)

Africa’s history has shown that the voracious behaviour of multinational oil and gas companies, combined with corrupt and under-capacitated governments, spell disaster for the environment and the human rights of poor and marginalised people living in affected areas.

Oil and gas extraction can lead to serious human rights abuses, particularly in Africa, where governments consistently demonstrate that they have neither the will nor the capacity to monitor and control the effects for those most affected. Add climate change to this, which is already affecting parts of Africa, and the negative effect on people’s human rights becomes even more severe.

In early 2019, the French firm Total claimed to have discovered a billion oil barrel-equivalents of oil and gas about 100km offshore from Knysna. This stretch of South Africa’s coast, the Garden Route, starts in Mossel Bay and ends at the Tsitsikamma National Park. This is just one of the many blocks around our 3,000km coastline earmarked for offshore oil and gas mining. And according to the project’s Environmental Impact Assessment’s scoping report, Mossel Bay is Total’s intended base for its mining operations.

While economists and politicians celebrate, one could argue that this discovery represents a major threat to South Africa’s already half-hearted commitment to emission cuts in the Paris Climate Agreement. In addition, South Africa’s mineral and petroleum legislation, in its current form, has no framework for regulating offshore exploration and exploitation. The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy seems ill-suited to deal with environmental risks that these activities may bring, while the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries appears to lack the mettle to hold other departments and polluters accountable.

Besides the environmental perils that may be unleashed, such as a blowout or oil spillages, the marginalised and poor will bear the brunt of this new development in South Africa.

We must ask ourselves: Will exploiting these resources do more harm than good? The April 2010 blowout of the Deep Water Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico — the largest marine oil spill in history — should serve as a clear warning and reminder of the dangers of offshore extraction processes. It was only after five months of oil spewing into the ocean that the British multinational oil and gas company BP, which was found to be guilty of gross negligence and wilful misconduct, was able to contain it. Ten years on and the impacts on the environment, people’s health and the loss of 22,000 jobs continue.

Yes, the possibility of a blowout occurring on our beautiful and world-famous Garden Route coast may seem remote, but the popular line that this find will bring prosperity and riches to our country is more likely just smoke and mirrors when one considers the true impact of oil and gas drilling. The evidence shows that, in Africa, human rights of vulnerable populations in lower-income groups take a blow when the oil and gas drilling begins. It is their constitutional rights to life and a healthy environment, their freedom of expression and access to adequate food, clothing and shelter that are the worst affected.

Twenty-six years ago, the execution of environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa by the Nigerian state brought international attention to the voracious behaviour of companies such as Shell, and its complicity in the most violent forms of repression.

In January 2021 in The Hague, a landmark verdict was announced when Shell Nigeria was finally found responsible for oil spills in the Niger delta. The case — filed in 2008 by farmers and fishermen whose land and livelihoods were decimated by these oil spills — found that Royal Dutch Shell violated its duty of care. There is a long history of communities fighting for their human rights against the impact of millions of barrels that have leaked out across the Niger Delta, the root cause of the ongoing environmental and human tragedy.

In Uganda, oil and gas exploration and exploitation have caused communities to have their farmland destroyed and water sources contaminated. A conflict has arisen between those who want the exploitation to continue and those who are trying to speak out against human rights abuses that are occurring. Total has been unable to stop these rights abuses or to address the most serious challenges and cases of threats of attack against communities, or human rights defenders who speak up.

Over the past 10 years in the Cabo Delgado area of Mozambique, the government forcibly removed whole communities from state-owned land after granting mining and gas exploration concessions. According to a recent report by Save The Children, people lost access to land, food and shelter. The devastating conflict that has arisen in the area has led to children, some as young as 11 years old, being beheaded. More than 670,000 people have been displaced, 2,614 people have died and one million people are facing severe hunger as a direct result.

According to human rights campaigner David Matsinhe, these grievances have fuelled the conflict more than any influence from international terror groups. Cabo Delgado was an undeveloped area before the oil and gas mining began, and according to Inocência Mapisse, a specialist in oil and gas, the government has not invested any money in the area since the mining began. Estacio Valoi, a Mozambican investigative journalist, said that on top of the conflict, Mozambique was still trying to recover from Cyclone Kenneth. This is an example of how climate change can exacerbate risks to already underdeveloped countries.

However, these violations are not solely the fault of the companies, but also that of corrupt governments who lack the will and capacity to protect people and the environment. This all contributes to an Africa that is, once again, ripe for looting. We see, time and time again, that the vast majority of African people suffer the destruction of their land and pollution of their water — which severely affect their health and livelihoods — while companies and a few connected power elites make billions. DM/MC

Linda Arkert is an environmental social worker. She works as a specialist researcher for The Green Connection, an environmental justice organisation running the “Who stole our oceans” campaign. Working with small-scale fishing communities around the country, the goal is to empower coastal communities to better protect themselves and the ocean by creating awareness of their rights as well as of legislation.

[Lisbeth]

A WORD FROM THE ENDANGERED WILD TRUST CEO

Yolan Friedmann, EWT CEO, yolanf@ewt.org.za

We have many challenges in our country, and one that plagues us all too often is poor decision-making on behalf of the authorities who have the mandate to safeguard our environment for current and future generations. We fully appreciate the fine balancing act that our decision-makers face, with millions of unemployed people needing jobs at all costs. But we cannot lose sight of the long-term devastation that can arise out of many developments that are, in fact, only opportunities for very limited, short-term gain for a select few. In cases like these, it behoves organisations like the EWT and our partners to fight for a greater good that considers not only the needs of future generations but those of the current as well. A case in point is the ongoing fight to protect the Mabola Protected Environment in Mpumalanga from inappropriate mining activity, which will destroy its critical biodiversity, its important contribution to water security, and its unique variety of threatened species.

The EWT is a member of a coalition of eight civil society organisations, which has been working since 2015 to prevent the development of the proposed Yzermyn coal mine near Wakkerstroom, Mpumalanga proceeding. Our reasons for wanting to stop this mine are based on our grave concern for the negative impact of this proposed coal mine, which would fall within a Strategic Water Source Area – one of only 22 areas from which more than 50% of South Africa’s freshwater originates. Protecting strategic water source areas is crucial for South Africa’s water security, provide water for people and economic activity, food security, and meaningful, long-term job creation.

There are currently five court challenges to various permits granted for the proposed mine, which are pending before the High Court, with more in the wings as decisions are taken which, in our view, are not in the interest of sustainable living and environmental protection to the benefit of all.

Whilst we await the courts’ decisions on the pending matters, the coalition went to court in March to seek an urgent interdict to halt any form of development. The matter went before the Pretoria High Court, which issued a ruling on 23 March that interdicts the coal mining company from commencing mining and related activities in a Strategic Water Source Area. The interdict was issued to allow the legal challenges of its various permits to be decided first before harm is done to this fragile system.

The EWT is not a litigious organisation by nature but takes seriously our commitment to ensuring a healthy planet and an equitable world that values and sustains the diversity of all life, so if we need to resort to the courts to help us secure critical water sources and fragile ecosystems, we will. The Mabola Protected Environment is one of these critical areas that cannot be lost to future generations for the unique and critically important life-giving services it provides. The other coalition members feel the same, and hence we joined forces to defend the Mabola Protected Environment along with the Mining and Environmental Justice Communities Network of South Africa, groundWork, Earthlife Africa Johannesburg, BirdLife South Africa, the Federation for a Sustainable Environment, the Association for Water and Rural Development (AWARD), and the Bench Marks Foundation, and we are all represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights in this critical and landmark case.

The EWT is pleased with the outcome of this court action, which builds confidence around the balancing role that our courts still play by upholding the rule of law in a country where competing interests can drown out the voices of many. We will continue to update you on this matter as the various court proceedings come to a head later this year.

[RogerFraser]

A new mining application has been made for the Marloth park area .

[Lisbeth]

Is it the same place?

[RogerFraser]

Appears to be the same place and same company again.

[Lisbeth]

Is it legal to ask for the same permit twice, when your first attempt has been denied not more than a year ago?

[Richprins]

[RogerFraser]

Is it legal to ask for the same permit twice, when your first attempt has been denied not more than a year ago?

Probably depends on what grounds it was denied or if they got an idea it was being denied then they withdraw it and change it and resubmit again .