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Environmental management is the process of administering,
supervising or handling the environment in order to achieve a
desired outcome, usually the protection or conservation of the
environment (Fuggle & Rabie, 1999). Environmental governance is
how government, the private sector, non-government and
community-based organisations manage the environment in a way that
reflects the goals of society. Good environmental management and
governance are key factors in ensuring sustainable development in
Mpumalanga.
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Provincial Government |
Provincial
commitment to the task of environmental management and governance
can be ensured through
a variety of ways, including the provision
of adequate financial resources for the task, the provision of
adequate human resources and the inclusion of environmental management and governance
issues in planning exercises.
The results show that Mpumalanga Province
is committed to the provision of financial resources for environmental
management and governance, yet is struggling to provide adequate human resources
to undertake the task.
Provincial commitment
is indicated by the increase in financial resources allocated
to environmental management in Mpumalanga (11%)
from 2001/02 to 2002/03, while however insufficient capacity
of human resources still exists (only 76% of available posts
were filled in 2002/03). Furthermore, currently no monitoring of implementation and
compliance for development activities takes place in the province. The reality
therefore is that t
he relevant environmental authority for
the province is not able to adequately fulfill their role due
to insufficient
staff.
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Local Government |
On the
local government (municipal) level, commitment to factor
environmental issues into the Integrated Development Plans (IDP's) has not
been displayed as less than 30% of the assessed IDP's contained
an Integrated Environmental Programme (IEP), while less than 20%
of those assessed, provided a budget for the IEP. Most of the
projects identified for the municipality related to the provision of
basic services and in general, the IDP documents that were assessed appear to treat
the environment as an 'add-on' issue rather than
as an integral part of the planning process, while only
1 IDP document showed any understanding of how the Environmental
Impact Assessment (EIA) legislation should be complied with during the implementation
of the projects listed.
Only 14 complete IDP documents, out
of a total of 33, were however reviewed to obtain this
data, as the balance of IDP documents had not been completed
at the time that data for the 2003 Provincial State of
Environment Report was collected.
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Private Sector |
The private sector's commitment to the
task of environmental management and governance in the province can
be displayed through the number of major industries in
the province having a recognised Environmental Management System (EMS).
Most
of the major industries did indeed
have one of these systems and voluntarily adopted one or
other type of recognised Environmental Management System (EMS), with
the International Standards Organisation's ISO 14001 being the most
common.However, environmental impacts due to small and medium
industries can sometimes be just as damaging and unfortunately there
is currently no knowledge of what environmental management systems
are being implemented by smaller industries in the
province.
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General Public |
Co-operative environmental
governance is essentially about government and the people managing
the environment together. The general public therefore has a key
role to play in co-operative environmental governance and ensuring
that government fulfills its environmental responsibilities to the
people.
The following indicators were
identified to reflect the state of environmental management and
governance in the province:
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