An investigation into the role of public participation in achieving social justice: a case study of EIAs undertaken (under old and new regulations) in South Durban

Abstract

ABSTRACT Post-apartheid South Africa has included the concepts of environmental and social justice in it’s environmental policy agenda so as to address the injustices of the past. Environmental assessment tools like the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) have been adopted to address environmental impacts. Participation is an important process of an EIA, which seeks to include the marginalized in environmental decision-making. With the scaling down of the EIA process in 2006, recent debates have highlighted the implications for effective and informed public participation. Further highlighted in these debates are a number of handicaps with regard to the practice of effective and influential public participation in EIAs. Firstly, there has been no further guidance on the process as compared to the 1997 EIA regulations. Secondly, the public are not provided the opportunity to play a role in project design, resulting in participation being a mere formality. Thirdly, the public are not included after the completion of the EIA hence the public do not have a say on compliance to environmental management plans. This study has argued based on evidence from four EIAs in South Durban that there is no effective and influential role played by the public participation process as there was little to no representivity of the actual ‘public’ at public meetings in EIAs in South Durban. This is highlighted by the fact that contrary to what is stipulated in the 2006 EIA regulations; public participation is seen and implemented as a rigid one size fits all process especially in the South Durban region. Public meetings were the only technique used other than those prescribed by the regulations in three out of the four EIAs. To an extent the public participation process of EIAs under the 2006 regulations has fallen back a notch in including the voices of the actual ‘public’ as conservative methods of participation are being used as compared to those EIAs under the 1997 regulations. However, this has less to do with the actual techniques used but more to do with the objective of the participation process itself. The local context of South Durban has also played a vital role in hindering participation with environmental and community organizations in South Durban dominating public meetings and distancing the actual ‘public’ from influencing the decision-making process. The extent and quality of participation in the 2006 regulations shows a shift away from an environmental justice approach as the views of the actual ‘public’ and their representivity in influencing the decisionmaking process was not achieved. Therefore, more emphasis needs to be placed on participatory democratic methods of participation as compared to the current representative democratic structures used in the environmental decision-making process in South Africa.