The need for sustainable development in South Africa, and thus the imperative need for responsible mining, has been recognised by all sectors including government, the non-governmental sector and industry. Yet despite this common goal – and South Africa having some of the best environmental legislation in the world – this will not be achieved unless legislation is correctly implemented, and enforced.

An important stride towards the promotion of responsible mining was government’s launch of the Mining and Biodiversity Guidelines in May 2013. They were jointly published by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Department of Mineral Resources. While they hold no legal standing, they provide pointers to existing biodiversity information and tools and how they can be used to integrate biodiversity considerations at every stage of the mining lifecycle. The MBG is for use by environmental assessment practitioners and mining houses when preparing environmental impact assessments and environmental management plans , as required  by law for  all prospecting and mining applications. EAPs play a critical role when it comes to the adherence and implementation of legislation related to mining and prospecting applications. They are meant to fulfil the role of filtering applications with acceptable impacts from those applications that would have unacceptable impacts, and then to present their findings to the relevant authorities in an objective manner – thus promoting sustainable development in South Africa.

Protecting our grasslands, planning a water secure future
The grasslands and more specifically those spanning KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, the Free State and Eastern Cape – are the major water production areas of our country, and also where most mining occurs. The Department of Energy states that “77% of South Africa’s energy needs are derived from coal” and that this situation is unlikely to change significantly in the next two decades owing to the lack of suitable alternatives to coal as an energy source.
Given that coal is an ever decreasing resource and energy demands are increasing, this does not bode well for the future of water and food security in SA. High yield agricultural land, water production zones, important biodiversity areas and coal deposits overlap. 

Addressing big mining challenges, prioritising our country’s biodiversity
Despite the MBG being released and endorsed by the ministers of the DEA and DMR, there appear to have been further mining and prospecting applications within sensitive locations in the grasslands, creating the need to analyse these applications in the light of the MBG.  If EAPs were adequately considering the relevant spatial data at their disposal through the MBG, the question is raised as to why mining and prospecting applications within sensitive water production and biologically diverse areas are still being pursued. One of the concerns raised by WWF at the outset of the development of the MBG was that although being a very worthwhile and useful product, the MBG may not enjoy optimal implementation unless it is adopted as policy by decision-makers such as the DMR. Adoption as policy even at a regional level would go a long way to ensuring better uptake, implementation and overall mainstreaming. WWF’s concern was linked to a WWF report released in late 2011 titled ‘Coal and Water Futures in South Africa: a case for conserving headwaters in the Enkangala Grasslands’. The report called on government to mitigate, manage and monitor the impacts of the mining sector in order to protect our valuable water resources. It stated that sustainable economic development, water and food security requires intervention at the highest levels to determine where coal mining, water and food provisioning must be prioritised.

Amongst other findings, this report revealed high levels of variation with regard to the quality of environmental impact assessments and environmental management plans as required by law to be developed  by an environmental assessment practitioner for all mining applications.

The study: Evaluating EAP standards in the mining sector
Funded by the WWF Nedbank Green Trust, WWF-SA commissioned a study into the existing controls over environmental assessment practitioner standards within the mining sector so as to determine the levels of adherence to best practice principles embodied within the MBG. A combination of quantitative and qualitative research was carried out. Using mining and prospecting applications over a one year period the approach was to assess 62 mining applications for their adherence to the six core principles of the MBG:

• Apply the law
• Use the best biodiversity information
• Engage stakeholders thoroughly
• Use best practice environmental impact assessment (EIA) to identify, assess and evaluate impacts on biodiversity
• Apply the mitigation hierarchy in planning any mining-related activities and develop robust environmental management programmes (EMP)
• Ensure effective implementation of the EMP, including adaptive management.