New plan does not provide a roadmap for environmentally sustainable SA

The design National Strategy for the Biodiversity Economy (NBES) proudly declares itself the roadmap to economic transformation, equality and investment based on utilizing South Africa’s rich mega-biodiversity.

However, the draft presents a series of inexplicably vague statements of intent, problem statements and objectives that are “yet to be determined”. The whole exercise begs the question, “What’s the point?”

Now that we have gone through the 41 pages of the NBES, four objectives, two “transversal imperatives” and four “enablers”, we are none the wiser. So in a legal way we asked: what should a strategy for a ‘biodiversity economy’? How should such a strategy deal with the controversies surrounding the ‘use’ of our natural environment?

The legal answer must of course be section 24 of the Constitution: South Africa’s environment ground standard or moral center, and the yardstick for measuring the validity of our use of the natural environment.

Section 24(b) of the Constitution provides that “everyone has the right to protection of the environment for the benefit of current and future generations”. This ambitious declaration makes us all the guardians of our environment for our grandchildren’s grandchildren. Doing this requires society to continually ask itself, “What impact will our actions in the present have on the environment in the future?”

When we consider using our plants and animals for our own benefit, we must ask ourselves: If we harvest fish from the ocean today, will there be fish in the ocean tomorrow? How do we practice agriculture? Guarantee food security?

How can we take advantage of the genetic wealth of our plant and insect life without creating a dystopian landscape of water scarcity, damaging monocultures, or the horrific silencing of bird calls, as described in that of Rachel Carson Silent spring?

Three obligations

But Article 24(b) does much more than just guarantee the right to environmental protection. It requires that “reasonable legislative and other mechanisms“ensuring that three separate (and potentially complex) obligations are met – primarily by the state through its laws, policies and strategies.

The first of these obligations is corrective: “to prevent pollution and ecological degradation”. Parliament must pass legislation that will stop the rot and prevent the collapse of our economy ecological foundations. Government departments must implement these laws and develop strategies to prevent the many environmental damages that have contributed to the “sixth mass extinction”.

The second obligation is to “promote nature conservation”. Nature conservation is therefore much more than a ‘nice to have’. It must be placed at the forefront of government priorities and integrated into governments’ policies, programs and strategies, from energy security planning to developing market incentives for mopane worm harvesters.

The third and final obligation is perhaps the most complex and misunderstood: the obligation to “securing environmentally sustainable development and use of natural resources, while promoting just social and economic development”. And in this text lies the answer to our lawyer’s question “what and how should our natural environment be used?”

The Constitution clearly qualifies the ‘use’ of natural resources. It must be “environmentally sustainable”. Broadly speaking, a “custom” is sustainable if it lasts over the long term – if it can be there for our children and our children’s children.

But the Constitution requires a certain kind of sustainability, that is, a kind of sustainability that is measured against the standards set by ecology. This is a scientific, environmental measure of how our living waters, seas, mountains, savannas, deserts and the ecosystems and biota they support can survive over the long term.

Strategy

What does this mean for a biodiversity economy strategy?

Firstly, it means that the strategy should not focus on “biodiversity”. economynot at all. Instead, it should provide a clear roadmap for how South Africa will ensure that the “sustainable use” targets set out in the DFFE 2023 targets White Paper on Conservation and Sustainable Use are implemented according to the scientific and legal standard of what the environment can actually support. This should mean more than just the survival of our biodiversity, but also its flourishing.

Second, the strategy should examine which historical uses are no longer environmentally sustainable. Before setting goals for “transforming” or “developing” certain markets, it should ask itself: What markets for living things exist? Should any of these be expanded? Which markets should be closed because they will leave future generations with ecological ruins? Which markets are justified by the constitutional understanding of transformation as fundamental reshaping relations within society and between society and its natural environment.

This is already announced in the White Paper’s vision of “a society living in harmony with nature”. It is also embedded in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework approach to breaking away from destructive environmental practices of the past and ensuring that our biological diversity is protected for future generations.

Exploitation

The NBES simply does not do this. It’s too vague. It is too focused on economic models of exploitation and expansion. Consideration is being given to expanding commercial fishing, which in some cases is already threatened by limited fish biomass. It aims to scale up the consumption of freshwater and estuarine biota (some of the most endangered in the world) without taking into account scientific warnings or the specific protections of the National Environmental Management Act.

It aims to expand trophy hunting for the “Big Five”, ignoring the DFFE’s own hunt policy position regarding the conservation and sustainable use of the Big Five. The use of native plants to “benefit communities” is described through peculiar “top-down” actions that are far removed from the principles of free, prior and informed consent, consultation and upholding cultural and religious rights.

The actions in the NBES are not only controversial. They go against the constitutional obligations imposed on the state to secure “environmentally sustainable use” of our natural resources. The vagueness of the NBES and its haphazard publication for comment ignore the requirements of legal certainty and provide it to the public enough information to make informed decisions.

In our commentsthe Biodiversity Law Center has pointed out these shortcomings. We also highlighted the promise offered by the NBES’s first goal: expanding megalandscapes and seascapes for life conservation and integrating multiple uses of the environment into a biodiversity conservation framework.

This is a transformational goal that, if properly implemented, can “secure environmentally sustainable use.”

We urge the DFFE to go back to the drawing board to:

Follow to its logical conclusion what it means to have a “mega life conservation landscape and seascape.”

Ask yourself what ecologically sustainable use means for the consumptive use of natural living things.

Provide a roadmap for environmentally sustainable use of South Africa’s mega-biodiversity that is clear, rational and enables our children’s children to remember the year 2024, thirty years after the advent of democracy, as the year in which the South African government recommitted to transformation and reform. securing their future. DM