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But it can also bring long-term and often destructive environmental impact. WESSA’s Mining Policy sets a framework for WESSA to engage with current and future mining issues. This includes ensuring that mining and related activities are adequately assessed and mitigated across their lifecycles.

Our aim is not to oppose mining in principle, but to understand its role in climate change and biodiversity loss, to ensure that mining and related activities are fully identified and adequately assessed across their lifecycles, and that the mitigation of detrimental immediate and long-term impacts takes place within reasonable timeframes and by those responsible.

We also call for adequate compliance monitoring by the authorities, and that strong enforcement action is taken when non-compliance is found. This is the only way to ensure responsible environmental practices in mining, in the interest of workers, communities and the sustaining environment.

We also recognise that South Africa has constitutional and moral obligations to protect the environment for current and future generations, that takes into cognisance South Africa’s global responsibilities and commitments, especially with regards to the voluntary commitments made as part of the Paris Convention to reduce GHG emissions, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a commitment to a Just Energy Transition (JET).

Read the full WESSA Policy on Mining & Mineral Resources.

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WESSA supports South Africa’s goal to achieve net zero CO₂ emissions by 2050. Our Energy Policy promotes five key energy transitions to ensure a Just Transition that protects people, other species, and the planet.

In general, WESSA supports energy generation solutions that:

1. Are assessed to be a combination of “best fit” and “minimal harm” to the specific country and local ecosystem conditions.
2. Adhere to the principle of sustainable development (in which social, economic, and environmental considerations are evaluated and addressed).
3. Employ the practice of collective stewardship in which all of society carries responsibility for addressing the challenge. But that such doesn’t absolve the polluter from paying, and importantly environmental justice principles must guide energy decisions, which includes enabling marginalised and disadvantaged communities to participate in the decision-making and beneficiation process.
4. Promote more efficient and reduced per capita consumption
5. Reduce or swop-out consumptive lifestyle and practices that are energy intensive for those that are less so, for instance reducing dependence on high-energy grown foods and clothes, composting organic waste, minimising food waste and more.

Read the full WESSA Policy on Energy.

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WESSA staff and volunteer activists opposed the proposal to mooring floating gas-powered powerstations in Saldanha, Ngqura and Richards Bay harbours, for contracts lasting 20 years.

Our opposition, along with many other NGOs and CBOs was based on the global warming and local environmental impacts, as well as on sustainable development and financial arguments against investing South Africa in a declining gas-energy future.

In July 2024, the SA government announced the withdrawal of these proposals. WESSA is now engaging in other offshore oil/gas seismic surveys and inland gas fracking proposal applications. Donate towards our advocacy work for a just energy transition.

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Sewage from 4 dysfunctional municipal treatment works spilling down the Crocodile, Swartspruit and Magalies Rivers have caused significant eutrophication of the dam waters, leading to extensive hyacinth growth (and at times other invasive aquatic weeds), which often covers the dam in excess of 30% of the dam surface area. This in turn has significant detrimental impacts on the dam’s ecology.

WESSA staff and volunteers, along with those of The Magaliesberg Biosphere, National Association of Conservancies/Stewardship of SA, Birdlife Harties and civic structures, have been pressing for appropriate and lasting action. They have recently taken to conducting independent water quality testing to demonstrate the pollution load, that requires intervention from provincial and national government.

To support our efforts in stemming the sewerage pollution and/or get involved in the clean-ups and invasive plant control actions, please contact John Wesson by emailing jwesson@wessanorth.co.za.

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A century later, we find ourselves in a world threatened by climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution in which humans have removed themselves from nature and sought to exploit our natural resources to support consumer lifestyles. The Earth has limits, and we have crossed several of those boundaries already that now have dire impacts on our ecosystem and the Earth our children will inherit.

Educate, Advocate and Act

In the face of these challenges, and in recognition of South Africa’s rich terrestrial and marine resources, WESSA’s strategic focus has centred on three core activities: educate, advocate, and act. In turn we have committed ourselves to and are guided by the principles of sustainable (ecosystem) development; natural justice and a just transition; and collective sustainability. Specifically on the advocacy front we have sought to be both proactive and reactive, and work at both a local and national basis.

All-of-society approach

To this end, our local membership regions and branches have become actively involved in local issues which has ranged from participating in campaigns against oil and gas extraction in the ocean (like the Shell and CGG anti-seismic campaigns), taking up sewage and pollution issues in local rivers and catchments, and inputting into various environmental impact assessments amongst others. We try use our local knowledge, access to membership’s (scientific) expertise, and a collaborative all-of-society approach to leverage positive change.

Strong public stance on issues

At a national level, we have focused on raising our “voice” on environmental matters and taken a stronger public stance on issues. Consequently, we have given detailed input into government policy on aspects such as plastic waste, nuclear energy, and the biodiversity “economy;” and collaborating with other environmental NGO’s and the DFFE on initiatives such as the 30 x 30 commitment (30% of our marine and terrestrial habitats restored and protected by 2030). We are also working to establish a raft of policy positions on various aspects such as mining, energy, sustainable use, water catchments, pollution and the like to create a principled and strategic platform from which to engage on daily issues.
Within the operational side of WESSA, this has also resulted in dedicated resources to support advocacy work, the re-aligning of our blue flag beach oversight to be more advocacy orientated, and the creation of a species project focus on Pangolins. As such, advocacy is joint endeavour of central staff, membership, and the Board’s Environmental Governance Committee (EGC), which gives us an especially useful range of resources and interest.

While our planet and country’s ecosystems are in a critical state, we are blessed with a rich biodiversity in South Africa’s land and seas, and our advocacy work will continue to seek collaborative and sustainable solutions to protecting, building resilience, and being part of the nature upon which we are dependent.

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Terrestrial and marine biodiversity best in the world

South Africa is blessed with terrestrial and marine biodiversity that is of the best in the world. Since humanity’s standing upright hundreds of thousands of years ago we have been dependent on natural resources and “ecosystem services” for our wellbeing. But that ecosystem is now threatened by human activity arising from the lifestyles and economies we have created off the backs of those resources. The science is clear, climate change and biodiversity loss represent an existential threat to human wellbeing. We have to urgently respond to the change by in turn transforming our behaviour and systems to both secure and restore those natural assets and their services that are integral to our survival.

But we are also challenged by the legacy impacts of colonialism and apartheid, and a global capitalist system that privileges the haves and supresses the have-nots through a consumerist orientation. Those systems have resulted in a prevalent conservation model in South Africa that fences off large tracts of lands and criminalises traditional hunting and gathering activities that were integral to many communities livelihoods and cultural practices.

Pragmatic reality

The pragmatic reality too is that South Africa already has a thriving biodiversity “economy”, but much of that happens in the shadows, supporting international criminal networks that have become expert at extracting and transporting high-value natural resources outside of South Africa. Rhino horn, abalone, pangolins, and succulents are amongst the more well-known examples that threaten those species and their habitats. Alongside those criminal activities we have commercial and “legal” exploitative practices of our wild spaces and species that have given rise to canned lion hunting, the lion bone trade, bush meat trade and the breeding of “fashionable” variants such as black impala and golden wildebeest.

None of those serve the integrity of our ecosystems. And of great concern is the unsustainable exploitation of fish stocks and the “gold rush” approach to offshore oil and gas reserves that fundamentally threaten our rich marine biodiversity. As things stand, we are likely to see the African penguin go functionally extinct in our lifetimes due to in the main over-fishing of their food stocks. African penguins are sentinel species, they are indicators of ecosystem health, and the need to conserve them is not because they are cute, but because we have to restore the ecosystems they depend on to do so, and in so doing help ourselves.

Something must be done. Urgently. The status quo is untenable.

Strides forward in public and private spheres

But while destructive practices abound, South Africa has made great strides in both the public and private spheres to secure and restore our biodiversity. There is no doubt that game ranching, private reserves, and conservancies have made a significant contribution to conserving wild spaces and species. There is no doubt that ecotourism generates significant benefits to the overall economy, and that its full potential has not been realised. And for those of us opposed to killing animals, the uncomfortable truth we must face is that trophy hunting and biltong/recreational hunts have made a positive difference to species wellbeing overall in the past. What the hunting fraternity in turn need to face is that consumptive preferences are changing, and South Africa’s wildlife “brand” is threatened by changing perceptions of what is socially acceptable. There may be money in trophy hunting now, but that’s changing rapidly, and we need to be looking at alternatives that have the same effect.

Support of sustainable development, natural justice, and collective stewardship

Guided by our principled support of sustainable development, natural justice, and collective stewardship, WESSA will be submitting extensive comments on the draft strategy. For instance we do not support trade in rhino horn because it leads to the domestication of such species and we lack the necessary governance and policing infrastructure to ensure such trade remains legitimate. We support wholeheartedly the dropping of fences and the creation of wild space corridors, but accept that in specific cases fences are required to keep human-animal conflict to a minimum. We would point to the Babanango Game Reserve and the Tsitsikamma National Park amongst many others as to how conservation and local community beneficiation can work.

We would however caution the drafters of the strategy that seek with good intent to make conservation “pay its way” and reduce the value of our biodiversity to a balance sheet entry. While it may be tempting to show biodiversity’s Rand value, it is in part that thinking that drives the notion that nature is there to solely serve our interests. The strategy may of necessity be focused on the “economy” of biodiversity, but it must form part of a raft of strategies that addresses the non-economic value and approach to our wild spaces and species.

Our ecosystem is a complexity. We are part of nature not separate from it. And it requires all of us, or at least a sufficient majority, to make sure we not only conserve what we have but rethink our relationship with the planet and the diversity of species we share it with. The strategy needs refining, but it is in our view a useful and necessary step forward.

Dr Gary Koekemoer (Chairperson WESSA EGC – Environmental Governance Committee)
Cindy-Lee Cloete (Acting CEO WESSA)

In response to The Sunday Times

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