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Madame Speaker
Deputy President
Honourable Members.

One of the key environmental challenges facing our country is how to manage our Marine resources and take care of our enormous coastline. We are faced as the world with a real possibility of global warming and similar dangers emanating from atmospheric change. Our country is getting dirtier everyday and our people's lives endangered, from ill managed and hazardous waste. These are the core issues that I would like to address as we take a look at the work of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism through amongst others the MCM, The Weather Bureau and the Antarctica and Islands programmes. All of these programmes are aimed at entrenching the principles of sustainable development geared at the improvement of people's quality of life.

MARINE AND COASTAL MANAGEMENT

Madam Speaker, South Africa is richly endowed with a diverse coastline of more than 3000 km, and an adjacent Exclusive Fishing Zone stretching 200 nautical miles (386 km) seaward.

This vast region comprises the cool and rich fishing grounds that provides enormous benefits to the people of South Africa and offers unique opportunities for economic and social development.

Against the background of widespread poaching of marine resources, the Department has identified improvement of marine compliance as a very high priority and has provided additional funding towards this cause. Actions to be taken include:

1. A partnership with the South African Police Services to relaunch Operation Neptune at the cost of R1 million, which will increase the capacity we have to patrol our marine resources.

2. Procurement of four purpose-built Fishery and Environmental Protection vessels to re-establish an effective fishery patrol service and to provide an oil spill counter measure service.

For South Africa to meet its obligations in terms of conservation of our Marine life and at the same time to transform an industry still substantially characterised by its apartheid past and by bringing into the industry new entrants from historically disadvantaged backgrounds, continues to constitute a major challenge.

I would like to give you a glimpse of the changes we are initiating:

1. We are establishing a dedicated rights allocation unit, adequately resourced and professionally staffed - a prerequisite to restoring public confidence in the fraught and acrimonious processes that currently surrounds the allocation of rights.

2. Shortly we will announce a set of additional policy directives and other arrangements that will govern the allocation of rights.

3. Since there is no capacity at present to go out and verify the information fishing rights holders provide the Department with, we shall institute such capacity within a new and credible unit.

4. Subsistence and artisanal fishing has to be given its due recognition and place in an effort to deal with the acute poverty along our coastline. We shall make further announcements about this in due course.

5. A key aspect of our new approach will be to give adequate and proper recognition to coastal communities. These communities will have first access to rights above any others.

6. We intend to divide the coastline into eight regions in order to have dedicated attention to the development and support of fishing communities.

7. Finally the development of new and under-utilised resources such as Mariculture will be promoted through support of public initiatives of this kind and through provisioning of relevant data and projection of trends.

Madam speaker, this house should note the importance of our international obligations with SADC and a variety of other International treaties on fishing.

Early next month during World Environment Week we will release the White Paper for Sustainable Coastal Development which will deal with the sustainable use and management of our coast.

POLLUTION AND WASTE MANAGEMENT

Pollution and waste management issues are foremost on government's agenda. Visible actions will be taken to establish waste management infrastructure in townships, dealing with medical and other hazardous waste that continue to threaten communities and contribute to increased poverty and degradation of the environment.

It is simply unacceptable that as we speak here today there are industries and businesses that are endangering the health and livelihoods of poor communities through pollution.

Air pollution in particular has received prominence recently with the release of a poisonous chlorine gas cloud by Polifin at uMbongintwini in KwaZulu-Natal. This follows a number of ongoing community struggles around sulphur dioxide pollution by oil refineries in the Durban South basin and Milnerton in Cape Town, and the poisoning of school children by SAPPI with sulphur dioxide in Umkomaas.

I want to clearly state that as government we have zero tolerance for companies that damage the health of residents and workers through their activities. Madam Speaker we will not hesitate to prosecute and recover damages from companies that disregard environmental norms and standards. Over the last three years we have shut down a number of companies for this kind of conduct

In the interim we have agreed to start negotiations with the refineries on putting in place co-operative agreements in terms of the National Environment Management Act which will entail the operation of ambient and emission monitoring, independent auditing of monitoring results and agreeing on emission reduction programmes. While I welcome the spirit in which industry has come forward to negotiate, I would like to put it on record today that these negotiations do not preclude more drastic action against the major polluters in this country. I would like to put you on notice that we will not tolerate the damage you are doing to people's health and the environment. If you pollute you must pay to clean up the mess.

The renewed vigour in which the Department will be tackling this issue is in line with our White Paper on Integrated Pollution and Waste Management, which will be publicly released next week together with the regulations that the minister alluded to on the use of plastic bags. Details on our 20 new waste management projects supported by the department will also be unveiled.

We are very encouraged by the overwhelming support that this call has received from the public. We recently learnt that Douglas in the Northern Cape, has been declared a plastic free zone. I challenge parliament to lead by example by declaring parliament a plastic free zone starting on World Environment Day 5 June 2000.

Internationally we are already playing our parts in this area- South Africa has been mandated by to host the Basel Regional Training Centre on behalf of English speaking countries which is intended to build capacity in hazardous waste management and transboundary movement of waste in the Southern Africa and the entire continent. This will further assist South Africa's programme to implement the Basel Convention.

ANTARCTICA AND ISLANDS

Like the Weather Bureau, we are looking to agentise the Antarctica and Islands programme of the Department. Linked to this is the establishment of an Antarctic Experience Centre in Cape Town so that people who are not able to travel to Antarctica can experience the sheer beauty of this arctic wilderness.

In brief, this programme provides scientific, liaison, logistical, administrative and personnel management support to SANAP and its international partners.

During the past year it has launched the Indian Antarctic expedition from South Africa. This is in line with establishing Cape Town as the gateway to Antarctica and a supply route to many of the international bases there.

International co-operation was further strengthened when South Africa and Germany signed a letter of intent with regard to establishing joint logistic and research ventures to Antarctica.

This year the programme will focus on:

* Contribute to conservation and resource use through research and monitoring and the management of the Prince Edward islands as Special Nature Reserves.
* Enhance public awareness of global climate change and ozone depletion.
* Provide research and monitoring opportunities for the Weather Bureau and research institutions through project funding and logistic support.

CLIMATE CHANGE

South Africa's ratification of the UNFCC Convention signifies government's commitment to join the global community in finding solutions to the escalating greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. South Africa's economy is coal based coupled with emissions from domestic coal burning as a result of a still underdeveloped electricity infrastructure. Despite the fact that South Africa is not obligated to a reduction target on greenhouse gas emissions, we have committed ourselves to a sustainable development growth path underpinned by the following aspects, which form the basis of the programme of action that will be implemented by the Department on climate change:

a) An urgent look at alternative sources of energy with less reliance on coal is necessary.
b) Other energy intensive sectors, which produce a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions, are also targeted to contribute to a decrease in emissions.
c) An increased export sector will result in greater scrutiny of South Africa's exports in as far as their coal intensity is concerned. In order to comply with increasingly stringent requirements South African Industry will need to invest in more environmentally sound technologies. Avoidance of future emissions is the strategic business approach to more sustainable production.

Government intervention in response to the effects of climate change requires an integrated approach. It is for this reason that the Cabinet has approved the collective involvement of the departments of minerals and energy, trade and industry, water affairs and forestry, transport, agriculture in working towards this objective. This collective action will culminate in a Response Strategy which outline has been approved by Cabinet and is due for finalisation in December 2000.

CONCLUSION

All these initiatives will enable South Africa to take its rightful place in the world stage in the implementation of resolutions of the United Nation Commission on sustainable development. For this reason South Africa is bidding to host the Earth summit ( RIO plus 10) to be held in 2002. This initiative alone will bring untold investment in South Africa and the entire continent in terms of amongst others tourism growth.

Another International Convention, which this department is responsible for, worthy of note, is the Convention to combat Desertification. This convention has a potential to reduce vulnerability of affected populations by securing their environment, increasing food security and creating new opportunities for alternative livelihoods.

The successful implementation of programmes such as local Agenda 21 requires a global partnership for sustainable development within which all nations make environmental political and social commitments. SA's recent hosting of a regional conference to deal with African Solutions fits in neatly with our vision for Africa's rebirth. This - a note to end.

Issued by the office of the Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Cape Town, 19 May 2000