INTRODUCTION

"Southern Africa is undergoing a massive transformation. Cities and towns are mushrooming across the region. Demand for permanent housing, for water, sewage and transport systems, for industrial and consumer products is increasing. Building on the real post-independence improvements in health and education provision, the people of Southern Africa are creating a new landscape much as they created the agricultural landscape of the past. Yet such a process of development brings new problems - not just of pollution and resource exhaustion but, significantly, of renewable resources. Energy requirements, wood consumption and, most importantly, water demand will be critical resources issues to address in the 21st century."1

The Southern African region faces common problems which derive in part from the nature of uneven and inconsistent capitalist development. These problems have been exacerbated by decades of liberation struggle, South African state-directed interventions based on political criteria, and, more recently, more than a decade of economic structural adjustment programmes. If the region is to move toward a sustainable and prosperous future, it must move together. For eco-systems respect no political borders: questions of resource use and sustainability must be approached from within a regional framework, otherwise natural resources will mark future sites of conflict rather than sources of co-operation.2

Building a coalition around environmental issues will not be easy. As with every other issue in South(ern) African society, environmental issues are deeply political, conflict generating, and tinged with questions of race.3 According to Ramphele and McDowell, "[e]nvironmental issues are relevant to all people. It has been argued that they have the potential `to build alliances across the divides of class and race' as, for example, in the public reaction to the indiscriminate one of pesticides. But in reality, there is no smooth and easy convergence of class and race interests around this issue."4

This must begin to change if the environment is to become a focal point for `healing' rather than `disease', for signs of the ailment is everywhere: unchecked urbanisation, misuse and abuse of diminishing amounts of communal lands, virtually unregulated commercial agricultural and large-scale industrial practises, and the incapacity and/or unwillingness of government to deal with any or all of the aforementioned pressures.

Moreover, an increasingly and disturbingly familiar array of symptoms suggests that the patient, if left unattended, may reach a terminal condition: reassertion of diseases such as tuberculosis, cholera, and bilharzia; desertification due to overgrazing, overstocking, and heightening uses of fuel wood; siltation of dams and riverbeds due to soil run-off; water and air pollution due to improper use of pesticides, toxic waste dumping and inadequate control of industrial emissions.5

The costs of continually ignoring these problems are beginning to be recognised. And if the language of `sustainable development' remains more rhetoric than reality, at least the region has begun to move in the direction of co-operation on some of these issues.6

It is the purpose of this article to explore some of the obstacles and incentives for increased regional co-operation on issues of the environment. It locates the majority of these obstacles and incentives within prevailing forms of regional state formations and economic interaction. It emphasises the long term sustainability of the region's political economies on these bases, and points to areas of potential co-operation. These areas, if left unexplored, may ultimately lead the region toward conflict and continued decline. If addressed systematically and seriously, these areas will form the basis for potential co-operation and renewal.

A GLOBAL `PARADIGM SHIFT'?

In a trenchant summary of the implications for future developments in South Africa of the Earth Summit, Rachel Wynberg notes, "almost 50 000 people gathered in Rio de Janeiro during June 1992 for what has been described as the inception of the Environmental Revolution."7 Perhaps its revolutionary potential lay in the fact that a wide range of non-government organisations (NGOs), and representatives from women's, indigenous peoples', youth and children's, religious and academic groups and organisations were able to attend in an official capacity. Even though many were unhappy about the `inclusiveness' of this non-government sector, their participation marked a watershed in international dialogue on environmental issues: not only a move toward co-operation and away from confrontation, but a move toward decentring the state and recognising the fundamental importance of non-state actors, forces and factors, on issues of the environment.8

BETWEEN `SAYING' AND `DOING'

The Earth Summit has built on twenty years' of discussion at the international level: from the first Stockholm conference in 1972 through the Brandt and Brundtland reports of the late-1970s and mid-1980s. What emerged from the Rio meeting, its inclusiveness notwithstanding, was much the same as emerged from past meetings: incisive analyses and lofty proclamation about what should be done to achieve sustainability in global development.9

As to what is being done, the world of policy-making and inter-state concerns looks much the same in 1996 as it did in 1972. Yet, the world has changed utterly, even though policy-making and political behaviour have not.10 The `deep greens', for one, argue that these profound structural changes in global political economy and ecology are due to the intractable pursuit of `business as usual'. The global political economy with its emphasis on states and markets operating in varying contexts of anarchy is leading inexorably toward a global `tragedy of commons'.

NEVERTHELESS, SOME `THINKING'

Despite the continuing dominance of the neo-liberal paradigm, the discourse of `sustainable development' has had a positive impact on popular and policy-making communities throughout Southern Africa. The global trend toward the language, if not always the practise, of `sustainable development' has at least forced the racist, exploitative, and very often unscrupulous corporate and political elite in the region toward some sort of environmental accountability. While these kinds of activities continue, it is clear that the global environmental movement has had some effect on business in Southern Africa, if only their decision to `circle the wagons'. For example, in 1991, business convened the Southern African International Conference on Environmental Management in Cape Town (SAICEM I), which has since become a regular event. At the same time, business has joined together on environmental issues in South Africa via the Industrial Environmental Forum (IEF), and in Zimbabwe via the Environmental Forum of Zimbabwe (EFZ). These efforts clearly came in response to the growing popular excitement over the Rio Summit on the Environment in 1992.

To be sure, capital continues to resist infringement on its profit-making abilities. It also continues to argue that marketisation and rapid economic growth are the panaceas for environmental degradation.11 Nevertheless, they have joined the dialogue, provide a useful counterpoint to deep green perspectives, and so facilitate debate.

Also in response to developing global environmental `norms' (indeed, conditionalities), each state in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has established an Environmental Council and/or Commission.12 In addition, "[s]ince 1987, and especially since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, African countries have begun to develop plans and strategies to address their environmental problems. One of the principal methods for accomplishing this has been through national environmental action planning (NEAP) ... NEAPs are strategic frameworks within which environmental and sustainable development issues are identified and prioritised, and constitute the foundation for a plan of action."13 At the same time, "[i]n an increasing number of African cities, local environmental action planning (LEAP) has begun", including Cape Town and Dar es Salaam.14

At the regional level, SADC-ELMS (SADC's Environment and Land Management Sector) produced a special report for the United Nations Convention on Environment and Development (UNCED) Secretariat entitled Sustaining our Common Future in 1991. More recently, SADC in association with Panos Publishers, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC), produced an overview of environmental issues and problems in the region.15 SADC has also taken a leading role in turning the Zambezi River Action Plan (ZACPLAN) into a regional project. There has also been a proliferation of country-specific environmental think tanks, of which SARDC is a good example. Originally started as a research centre documenting South Africa's destabilisation of the region, SARDC has since grown in scope and size, with a significant amount of its resources committed to environmental issues.

THE PERILS OF SAYING, BUT NOT DOING IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

Though much `thinking' and `talking' has been done, it is still early days in terms of action. In Southern Africa, this lack of action is particularly serious. All SADC countries' economies, save for Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (BLS), contracted significantly during the course of the 1980s. Botswana, still the `darling' of the neo-classical economic world, has for several years been suffering economic contraction.16 Causes of poor economic performance are legion and well known. Resulting debts have led to de facto and de jure adoption of economic structural adjustment programmes throughout the region. Trends in world production have moved toward a new international division of labour, involving in part, the globalisation of production, the exponential increase in the speed and magnitude of finance capital flows, and a general decline in demand for resources which drove heavy industries in the past.17

Southern Africa's states and peoples increasingly find themselves on the periphery of this process: their products poorly developed and in little demand save for limited special preferences vis-à-vis Lomé and limited special performances by a few regionally-based multinational conglomerates such as Lonrho, Anglo American, and De Beers in the areas of sugar, timber, textiles and minerals. Moreover, regional `development' is hampered by capital flight and limited foreign investment, the legacy of apartheid-driven sanctions and regional instability.18 Like the African continent in general, Southern African states have often declared their intention to take a collective approach to problem solving in the region. Yet, strong, vested domestic interests - from protected companies to embattled regimes - combine with the imperatives of international capitalism - particularly through structural adjustment programme (SAP) conditionalities - to limit regional co-operation and push Southern Africa's peoples further toward Kaplan's hypothesised "coming anarchy".19

In the wake of this behaviour, new threats have emerged in all SADC states, including its newest member, South Africa. The feelings of alienation from and abandonment by the state on the part of the majority of the region's peoples, exacerbated in some cases by the negative impacts of structural adjustment, have given rise to sub- and supra-national redefinitions of `security' and `community': from Islam and ethnicity to crime networks and co-operatives.20

Everywhere there is increasing incapacity of the state to take remedial actions. As a result, unemployment is increasing and the majority of Southern Africans find themselves engaged in some form of informal sector activity, including some specifically unsavoury pursuits, such as drugs, wildlife, and weapon trade, in order to make ends meet. Clearly, Southern Africa's political economies cannot continue on this highly destructive path.21

BUILDING CONFIDENCE, FINDING CONSENSUS

Post-apartheid South(ern) Africa desperately needs to focus on issues with co-operative and consensus-building potential if anything positive is to emerge out of the new dispensation. Only in this way may the legacy of suspicion and conflict in inter- and intra-state relations begin to be overcome.22 The environment is such an issue. Albie Sachs touched a nerve when he argued that South Africa's new constitution should include `third generation' or `green rights': "[The struggle against apartheid] is first and foremost a battle for political rights, but it is also about the quality of life in a new South Africa. It is not just playing with metaphors to say that we are fighting to free the land, the sky, the waters, as well as the people. Apartheid not only degrades the inhabitants of our country, it degrades the earth, the air and the streams. When we say Mayibuye Afrika, come back Africa, we are calling for the return of legal title, but also for restoration of the land, the forest and the atmosphere: the greening of our country is basic to its healing ... There is a lot of healing to be done in South Africa."23

LEARNING BY DOING I: INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS

In the South(ern) African case, resource use issues have usually been resolved by a combination of conflict and violence: from relatively peaceful demonstrations over pollution of the coastal waters around the Western Cape, to physical removal of black families for apartheid and/or `development' purposes. Yet, resource issues need not always be dealt with in this way. People, particularly policy-makers, will often take a peaceful path around an issue if possible. One of the major problems with Kaplan-type scenarios over the environment is that they overstate the degree to which problems of scarcity will lead directly to or be resolved by violence. State-makers and citizens alike can and do `relearn' their interests, especially when peaceful options with variable pay-offs can be presented to them.24

With regard to the question of whether international actors `learn' and therefore modify behaviour depending on specific clusters of issues, Haas tells us that "[c]hanging perceptions of values and interests among actors are associated with changed behaviour, though not in obedience to any pattern of rationality imputed or imposed by the observer. There is no fixed `national interest' and no `optimal regime'."25 Similarly, it can be argued that there are neither fixed interests not optimal ways of organising inter- and intra-state behaviour on issues of the environment and development. Positions change as information changes.

There is scope for co-operation on many environmental issues. Regionally and in South Africa in particular, the environment has been a recurrent site of struggle leading to violent conflict. The very notion of the `environment' needs to be reconfigured and presented anew to the public. One possible point of departure, as argued by David Fig, is the appointment by government of an `environmental champion' - like Albie Sachs, for example - a person who appeals to a broad base of society and is not associated with middle-class, white, `conservationism' under the old apartheid regime.26 Susan Tanner, director of Friends of the Earth Canada, argues that Vice President Al Gore serves such a role in the US and along with Carolyn Browner, Gore has managed to push ahead with progressive environmental legislation: from mandatory Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs), to sanctions against Taiwan for their role in the global trade in endangered species.27

There is also a need to strengthen national and regional environmental institutions. These institutions can serve dual purposes: as talking shops where antagonistic interest groups can present their cases and ideas in a civil(ised) setting; and as research institutions, as information is crucial to this process. Regional governments must also work to enhance their capabilities for environmental monitoring and analysis. Moreover, governments must commit enough resources to environmental issues so that `needs' can be discerned, appropriate policies identified, and compliance with the appropriate legislation enforced. Whatever one may think about the political and economic philosophy of the World Bank, after Rio the Bank is committed to assist in data gathering on environmental and sustainable development issues. The Bank's recently tabled Africa Technical paper, Toward Environmentally Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A World Bank Agenda, is a case in point. So too is its series of publications, entitled Towards Environmentally Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa.

SADC governments and SADC as an organisation must work toward new regulations for business and industry. Government clearly has a central role to play, for it is government which sets the regulatory framework within which business and industry operates.

The need for broad-based `learning' cannot be overestimated. In its special report for the UNCED Secretariat,28 SADC highlighted a series of interlinked institutional handicaps inhibiting `learning' and prohibiting action on environmental issues. In every state across virtually every environmental issue, SADC's members were seen to suffer from

• a lack of scientific information about the state of the physical environment; and
  
  

• the inability to collect such information due to inappropriate institutional frameworks, a lack of trained personnel and too few funds to direct toward environmental concerns.29

Nevertheless, there is a good deal of ongoing intra- and inter-state activity which seeks to rectify this. Given the importance of water resources and the related need for cheap energy in the region, most progress has been made in this area (see below).

LEARNING BY DOING II: DEMOCRACY AND CIVIL SOCIETY

Yet, government alone cannot do enough. Civil society should be encouraged to organise against common environmental enemies and concerns: waste generation, air and water pollution, toxic waste and nuclear power, to name but a few of the obvious focal points. Community based organisations should also be encouraged, perhaps with the assistance of international NGOs like the World Conservation Union and the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Africa 2000 programme, to press for recognition of their rights to equitable resources use (see below). St. Lucia-type conflicts should be avoided by a general move toward what the IUCN, among others, calls "sustainable utilization", in other words, shared resource use by all stakeholders in a given geographical space. The CAMPFIRE programme in Zimbabwe is most often put forward as a viable model in this regard.

LEARNING BY DOING III: MAKING BUSINESS

A PARTNER, NOT AN ADVERSARY

Equally important is the need to involve business and industry in this project of `renewal'. Their interests in resource use differ markedly from those of society, with resource use fundamentally being a class issue. The numerous conflicts over nuclear power generation, mineral exploitation, and industrial exploitation and despoilation of human resources and natural environments - problems seemingly inherent to capitalist, industrial development - are testimony in this regard. Yet, the effort must be made to move business and industry toward a sustainable development model.30 Indeed, given emerging, particularly post-Rio, pressures from Western donors, investors, interest groups and markets, South(ern) African business is quickly learning that profit and expansion are tied to their being `green'.31 Government, through creative tax incentives, and civil society, through a combination of confrontation and dialogue, must push business in the direction of sustainability.

There will inevitably be numerous setbacks, given the degree to which the problems and programmes of apartheid and raw materials-based capitalism are entrenched. But, at the same time, environmental issues seem to hold more promise than almost any other issue for confidence building and consensus-making in the `new' South Africa.

ONE POINT OF MULTIPLE INTERSECTION: WATER

It is a truism to say that "[w]ater is Africa's critical resource",32 for all life on Earth depends on water. Nevertheless, regular and increasingly prolonged occurrences of drought, combined with burgeoning human populations, and highly skewed patterns of resource access and distribution throughout Southern Africa make water an ever scarcer and more precious commodity. According to the African Development Bank, "[c]urrent calculations are that by 2000, South Africa will suffer water stress, Malawi will have moved into absolute water scarcity and Kenya will be facing the prospect of living beyond the present water barrier. By 2025, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe will suffer water stress, Lesotho and South Africa will have moved into absolute water scarcity, and Malawi will have joined Kenya living beyond the present water barrier ... Competition for shared water resources will intensify."33

Water resource use everywhere has given way to a multitude of related environmental problems:

• serious water-related over-grazing (e.g. around boreholes in Botswana);34
  
  

• erosion along the banks and siltation of the Zambezi River due to inappropriate farming practices and large numbers of small scale gold panners;35
  
  

• severe siltation and pollution of the region's myriad freshwater resources - dams, lakes, rivers, dambos;
  
  

• coastal erosion and destruction of shrimp nurseries in Mozambique and Tanzania due to unchecked exploitation of mangrove forests;36 and
  
  

• declining fish stocks due to over-exploitation of the resource and/or eutrophication of water bodies.37

The list goes on. South Africa, no less than its fellow SADC members, faces these same problems, often to more serious degrees.38 According to Yeld, "much of South Africa will experience the equivalent of permanent drought somewhere between 2002 and 2040. Water rationing is likely to become a fact of life."39 At the same time, "[m]ost South African rivers are impounded or regulated at one or more points along their length, radically altering their ecological status. So much water is now extracted from previously perennial rivers - for example, the life-sustaining arteries of the Kruger National Park, the Letaba and Levuvhu rivers - that they have ceased to flow for long periods, despite good rains."40

Both the need for `water security' and actions taken to assure this, highlight the potential for increased conflict (in addition to co-operation) over water resources in the near future. Moreover, given the ubiquitous human need for water, but incredibly uneven usage and demand (between, say, rural farmers and Anglo American's industrial holdings; or South Africa - which consumes eighty per cent of the region's water, but has only ten per cent of the resource - and the rest of SADC's member states), resource use conflicts are likely to involve multiple stakeholders with widely varying powers. Varying types of water usage also ensures future sites of conflict: agri-business, industry, small scale rural farmers and fishers, urban consumers, and tourists all have differing needs and perceptions of water resources. Conflicts, therefore, will be of the inter-state and intra-state variety, involving both state and non-state actors at local, national, regional, continental and global levels.

WATER AND INTER-STATE CO-OPERATION

In terms of inter-state relations, wetlands and other water resources and their use all have transboundary characteristics: proposed upstream interventions, like the Namibian National Eastern Water Carrier (NNEWC) or the proposed Pungwe River dam in Zimbabwe can have serious downstream consequences. Whereas the NNEWC proposes to "extract a limited 3m3/sec from the Okavango River early in the next century, which is less than one per cent of the present inflow", the Pungwe River dam will cut off the traditional water supply for many rural people in the Beira area of Mozambique.41

Similarly, Botswana's use of the Chobe impacts on riverine communities along the Zambezi. Lesotho and South Africa co-operate on the Highlands Water Project which intends to bring water to South Africa's industrial heartland. South Africa and Mozambique, and South Africa and Zambia co-operate on supplies of hydro-electrical energy.42 The Swazi case points in a hopeful direction. "Swaziland has four major river basins, namely the Lusutfu, the Komati, the Mbuluzi and the Ngwavuma. All the rivers originate in South Africa except the Mbuluzi and Ngwavuma. Each river basin is shared either with Mozambique or South Africa or both. Therefore international negotiations are necessary before any water resource development can be undertaken by the country. The three countries have formed a Tripartite Permanent Technical Committee to advise the respective governments on technical matters of common interest relating to water use and availability in any of the basins. Negotiations for the sharing of water resources are based on the Helsinki rules."43

FINDING ENERGY FOR REGIONAL CO-OPERATION

Hydro-electrical power generation has historically been a controversial and conflict-generating endeavour, the Tonga in the Lake Kariba area being a famous case in point. Given the alarming rates of air pollution from the use of fossil fuels in South Africa, particularly in the townships, and by thermal power-generating plants in the Gauteng region, many in South Africa are keen to increase urban electrification, while simultaneously decreasing the amount of fossil fuel consumed.44

Energy use in South Africa is extremely inefficient. For example, South Africa has 0,7 per cent of the world population, but it accounts for two per cent of global greenhouse emissions.45 In addition, an estimated 3,7 million dwellings, comprising two-thirds of South Africa's population - 24,5 million people - are without electricity.46 These households are dependent on kerosene, liquid petroleum gas, coal, wood, candles and batteries for their daily energy needs.47 Moreover, given that the highest grades of coal are exported, rural and township dwellers are burning lower grade, high ash producing coal. This has resulted in extremely hazardous health conditions leading to, among others, respiratory illnesses.

Eskom has argued that its policy of `electrification for all', which entails 2,6 million `financially viable' new connections planned for 1992-8, will lead to improved air quality and therefore quality of life in the townships.48 While acknowledging that increased demand for electricity will increase pollution in the Eastern Transvaal where the majority of its thermal generating plants are located, Eskom argues that transference of pollution out of the peri-urban areas to plant locations will amount to net benefits.49 Despite scientists' scepticism over these claims,50 both Eskom and the ANC-led government are determined to pursue this policy path.

Recognising the potential international outcry against still more environmentally unfriendly energy production (Eskom presents the township electrification and installation of desulphurisation scrubbers in either/or terms),51 many of SADC's other member states perceive national and regional benefits - specifically foreign exchange earning capability - in the creation of regional power grids based on hydro-electric generation.

The electrical parastatals of Zimbabwe and Zambia, which co-operate via the Zambezi River Authority (ZRA) on potential and future use of the Zambezi, have recently entered into a contract with Eskom for the creation and sale of energy. A similar deal has been struck with Mozambique. Ironically, though sharing the same river basin, the ZRA excludes Mozambique. Actions taken upstream clearly have downstream effects, and separate agreements signed with South Africa have the potential to create conflict between these states.

INTER-STATE CO-OPERATION AND INTRA-STATE DISAFFECTION: A ZIMBABWE CASE STUDY

One potential means of moderating these conflicts is through inter-state co-operation. Yet, an important criticism of inter-state co-operation on resource use issues is that it ignores the interests of those most in need of access to the resource: indigenous peoples. How Zimbabwe's peoples and policy makers have addressed this issue, is worth detailed analysis.

From Lake Kariba to the Osborne farm: failing to learn

In a landlocked country inhabiting a region which chronically suffers prolonged periods of drought, decisions regarding water resources are high politics. Zimbabwe has no indigenous lakes. There are, however, roughly 8 000 impoundments, of which 150 (besides Kariba) are considered to be large, i.e. over one hectare in size. Of the total water consumed in Zimbabwe, more than ninety per cent goes to agriculture. Ironically, "[b]ecause the pumping costs to areas with good agricultural potential would be prohibitive, almost no agricultural use is made of [the] Kariba Dam."52 However, Kariba, like other large dams, was constructed primarily for hydro-electric power generation. At the same time, Lake Kariba forms one of the major tourist attractions in Zimbabwe. It is therefore a highly valued foreign exchange earner, and contributes significantly to Zimbabwe's gross national and domestic products (GNP and GDP).

Dam construction, however, is not always as successful or sustainable. In almost all cases, the social costs of construction, particularly where indigenous peoples are to be uprooted and resettled, are very high. Many Third World countries, however, tend to gloss over the social costs of dam construction and place too high a value on hydro-electric generation, tourism and other water-related industries. In fact, the vast majority of dams constructed can no longer be used after fifteen to twenty years.53 In assessing whether or not dam construction is ecologically, socially and economically viable, therefore, an open dialogue among all affected and interested parties should ensue. Historically, this has not been the case.

The potential for conflict at and around proposed dam sites, due in large measure to top-down types of agreements, remains severe. The lessons of the Tonga seem not to have been learned. The Tonga, who numbered about 86 000 people, farmed the Gwembe Valley, producing two rain-fed or floodwater-fed crops per year. Fishing was conducted along the banks and floodplains of the Zambezi and was done for consumption and barter.54 As Masundire55 points out, "[t]he socio-economic life of the Tonga was intimately linked to the Zambezi valley." Resettlement took place between 1956 and 1959. The Tonga were forcibly moved to higher ground "with poor soils and terrain which was unsuitable for agriculture."56 In all, roughly 45 000 people were resettled. According to Machena, "[t]here was no compensation from government. Agricultural risk became very high and even today drought and malnutrition are a continuous situation that the Tonga must face. In addition to loss of agricultural land, their social pattern was disrupted and there was a permanent barrier from their Zambian relatives. It was hoped, however, that the development of a fishery would at least absorb some of the displaced populations."57 What was once a sustainable society has since developed into an impoverished `bantustan' on the margins of a major tourist centre.

Yet, these kinds of decisions continue to be handed down. Hundreds of families were displaced without adequate compensation prior to the construction of the Manyuchi Dam in Mwenezi District of Masvingo Province. The recent commissioning of the Osborne Dam, situated on the Odzi River, thirty kilometres northwest of Mutare in Manicaland Province has displaced 1 600 families.58

The desire for hydro-electric power is compelling and overwhelming. The provision of power for industrial development, the prospect of a steady source of foreign exchange deriving from, for example, the sale of hydro-electric power, fish exports, and tourism, among others, in addition to the creation of numerous jobs in seriously debt distressed national economies, are clearly hard to resist. Large scale dams, in spite of their localised negative effects and the controversy they continue to generate, are likely to continue being built in the foreseeable future. Engagement, not disparagement, remains the only option for civil society.

From Zacplan to Batoka Gorge: failing to listen

Engaging the state, however, does not necessarily mean that its representatives will listen. This is particularly the case with international waterways, where `high politics' tends to pre-empt or upstage state-civil society relations. In Southern Africa, the development of Zacplan is one such case.

The Zambezi is the fourth largest river basin in Africa, flowing eastward 3 000 kilometres from its source on the Central African Plateau. It is shared by eight countries, and for some of these countries, like Zambia and Zimbabwe, it is the principal water source. The basin includes numerous types of water resources. Surface water resources include river systems, swamps (e.g. the Okavango which is 26 750 km2; Kafue which is 7 000 km2; and the Lubanga which is 2 600 km2), and lakes, both natural and manmade. Groundwater resources are also numerous and varied.59

Thirty per cent of the total population of the eight basin countries, i.e. twenty million people, live within the river basin. Of the four main `basin countries' - Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe - this total increases to 94 per cent of their total populations over 79 per cent of the total basin area.60 Major industrial sectors exist in these countries: metal manufacturing, machinery, textiles, clothing, footwear, fertilisers, pesticides, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, furniture, plastic and rubber goods, cement and food processing.61 One of the main water consumers and polluters, however, is the coal industry. The highest water consumption is that of the aluminium smelters. According to Lazlo, "[t]he negative effects of mining and industrial development are many. Worth mentioning are over-exploitation of natural resources and pollution."62

In 1985, the United Nations (UN), through its Environmentally Sound Management of Inland Waters (EMINWA) programme, established a working group to explore inter-state co-operation on the sustainable use of the Zambezi River basin. A myriad of problems was identified - inadequate monitoring, soil erosion, deforestation, lack of portable water and sanitation, lack of community participation, inadequate protection of wetlands, inadequate dissemination of information to the public - and Zacplan was formed as an action programme of SADC. "[SADC] initiated discussions among its members to pre-empt possible conflicts over sharing of Zambezi river water, or any other shared water bodies in the region. Started in 1985 as the Zambezi River Action Plan ... discussion on ways to share water equitably among the Zambezi River states has grown into a draft treaty among all SADC members governing any shared watercourse in the SADC region."63

Zacplan consists of four major components, each with numerous sub-components:

• environmental assessment;
  

• environmental management;
  

• environmental legislation; and
  

• supporting measures.64

According to SARDC, "[t]he treaty will be an important step for SADC. With several countries eyeing the Zambezi waters thirstily and other water-rich countries considering international trade in water, the potential exists for mutually beneficial cooperation."65 At the international level, it seems as if there is indeed a concerted effort borne of necessity to address the needs of the region based on consensus. However, according to Matiza-Chiuta, Zacplan is a failure: not only does it ignore extant social needs and problems of rural basin communities, it also serves to exacerbate them.

In its formulation, Zacplan was a UN-initiated, government-controlled project where NGOs had no voice and stakeholders were not consulted. Inter-state co-operation on River Basin management paves the way for more Kariba-type solutions, including the marginalisation of indigenous voices from the negotiating process and, ultimately, peoples from the land. To this day, thousands of marginalised peasants practise small scale gold panning throughout the basin area, particularly in north and northeastern Zimbabwe, causing serious problems. These include erosion, but also violent conflict as internal migration puts individuals from beyond the district against indigenous peoples, and of AIDS, alcoholism, and accidental deaths, as river banks collapse and bury panners in their tracks.66

At the same time, plans by Zimbabwe and Zambia on construction of a new hydro-power station at Batoka Gorge, which runs between Victoria Falls and Kariba along the Zambezi River, have raised the interest of state and non-state actors around the world. Many people are concerned about the impact of this project on the Falls. In Zambia's case, however, the possibility of an additional source of foreign exchange seems overwhelming. "[T]he state-run Zambia Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) are determined to see that the project is implemented. `I believe this investment is justified and has as much significance as the copper mines', Zesco managing director Robinson Mwansa said. Mwansa said the station could earn Zambia much needed convertible currencies through power exports to Zimbabwe and other neighbouring countries."67

The importance of water for regional co-operation is manifold. Its use involves people and institutions that transcend state boundaries and narrow, often narrowly-scientific, perspectives. People can no longer be satisfied with leaving Zambezi River management to organisations like Zesa. It is imperative that a broad-based dialogue on water resource uses is encouraged.

Save as the future?

It would seem that where water resources are concerned, particularly in a part of the world which suffers both chronic water shortage and highly skewed capitalist development, the state-capital coalition (a coalition which many define as `corporatist'), invariably wins the day. However, there is some evidence from Zimbabwe that this may not always be the case. Dialogue has become a key element in several instances of water resource use. Most often it involves international, high profile groups (like IUCN and UNDP) supporting an array of unorganised and under-funded community-based organisations (CBOs) by pushing states toward inclusion and negotiation rather than exclusion and confrontation; and by lobbying for direct participation of CBOs at all levels of the policy-making process, including, in many cases, a central position for rural women.68

Recent experience concerning rehabilitation of the Save River catchment area provides some evidence of this. In mid-1994, the IUCN convened a seminar on the Save River catchment area. The catchment extends over 4,2 million hectares, covers roughly ten per cent of Zimbabwe's land surface, and contains the country's major interior river. The river itself runs nearly 400 kilometres from the central watershed to south-eastern Zimbabwe and into Mozambique. The Save River encompasses about twenty per cent of all the cultivated land in commercial hands of Zimbabwe and has forty per cent of the communal land population. It is of national importance in Zimbabwe's agricultural development as it forms the basis of several of the major irrigation schemes in the country, notably those at middle Save and Chisumbanje. The south-east lowveld of Zimbabwe has the best potential for extensive irrigation development in the country. However, in recent years the river system has suffered from excessive siltation caused by increasing population pressure and the associated problems of deforestation, overgrazing, stream bank cultivation and soil erosion induced by poor land management.

The seminar convened by the IUCN, attempted to address popular problems and issues on the way the Save was handled by government. The seminar would mark, it was hoped, an initial step toward establishing a broad-based dialogue concerning resuscitation of the river. Like most environmental issues, however, action on the Save had been marred by an elitist, exclusivist approach. For example, the UNDP, through its Africa 2000 programme, compiled two studies of the Save River catchment focussing on the need to involve indigenous peoples in the decision-making process and to approach resuscitation of the catchment on a regional (i.e. including Mozambique) basis. These were presented to the Zimbabwe government, but the government made no response.69

As with ZACPLAN, governments will perceive other interested parties, legitimate though their interests may be, as competitors, not partners. So, for example, problems of erosion and siltation due to streambank cultivation were `solved' by forcibly removing small scale farmers from the area. And problems concerning the loss of woodland cover due to overcrowding on communal lands have been neither considered part of the Save River rehabilitation scheme, nor seriously addressed at all.

The seminar, in contrast, saw 86 groups represented, including many representatives from Zimbabwean-based local communities, the international donor community, conservationists in Zimbabwe and elements of the corporate sector representing lowveld sugar estates.70 To this point in time, little progress has been made beyond establishing a "catchment coordinating body". According to the IUCN, local involvement in the whole catchment area remains limited. However, without intervention from international actors, like the IUCN and the UNDP, draconian state measures would have remained the order of the day. Here, at least, is an inkling of change.

The IUCN intends to organise more of these kinds of meetings, particularly at the regional level, with one of the main aims being to encourage inter-racial and intra-regional dialogue.71 With the movement of white South African farmers into parts of western Mozambique, and recent discussions about transnational game parks management, the Save River seminar seems an important step toward finding common solutions to water resource problems.

Toward a more nuanced understanding of water

Dam construction is but one small, if important, element of inter- and intra-state co-operation on water issues. Ironically, the Wetlands Programme for Southern Africa was started by SADC in recognition of the negative impact of haphazard and unco-ordinated developments in the region on wildlife. It was, therefore, neither a water resource nor a sustainable development/sustainable livelihood issue.

According to Thabeth Matiza-Chiuta, IUCN/ROSA co-ordinator of the Wetlands Programme, the IUCN was invited by SADC particularly in recognition of its diverse state, international NGO, and business membership base. Given this base, the organisation was seen to be well placed to deal with conflict/co-operation in the area of transboundary water resource issues.72 The Wetlands Programme seeks to integrate all aspects of water resource utilisation and management: from ocean fisheries and mangrove cultivation, to hydro-power, tourism and national parks management along lakes and rivers, from dambo-based, small scale agriculture, to groundwater borehole construction and its use.

Recognising that water may be the casu belli in the region in the 21st Century, it is incumbent upon all groups interested in conservation, sustainable utilisation, sustainable livelihood, economic growth and sustainable development to talk to each other. It is imperative that the pressures under which governments operate are recognised, not trivialised: problems of debt, structural adjustment, burgeoning populations that increasingly live in poverty, and within a decaying environment, ensure that these resources will be used. It is imperative that stakeholders and other members of civil society, both in the region and internationally, are made aware of the issues, the stakes, and the proposed options, and take an active role in discussion.

EMPOWERING CBOS: FROM `CONSERVATION' TO `SUSTAINABLE UTILISATION'

At the same time, these issues overwhelmingly mean the preserve of bureaucrats, technocrats and politicians. There remains little room for empowering people at the grassroots level. However, it seems that there is both space and hope for CBOs and, by extension, for regional co-operation in the direction of sustainable development. Firstly, both the end of the Cold War and the end of apartheid provide the political context within which the needs and demands of civil associations must be taken more seriously. Indeed, `democracy' has become a de facto cross-conditionality in inter-state, donor-recipient negotiations. Secondly, many international NGOs and intergovernment organisations (IGOs) (like the IUCN, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), the UNDP, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)) now endorse an approach based on sustainable utilisation.73 This approach recognises that conservation is not possible unless the people who live within these eco-systems are themselves given a voice regarding preservation of the natural environment and sustainable utilisation of the resources therein: sustainable utilisation for sustainable livelihoods.74

Programmes like CAMPFIRE in Zimbabwe (Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources), the Selous Conservation Programme in Tanzania, and Pilanesberg National Park in South Africa are all examples of peoples' empowerment at the local level, as are game farms and commercial hunting.75 As Mokone, the Permanent Secretary in Botswana's Ministry of Commerce and Industry, has stated with regard to the culling and subsequent marketing of elephants and elephant products: "Bringing benefits to our local community by way of employment creating and income generating opportunities would be very difficult, because the domestic market for elephant products is small. In essence, CITES is blocking our ability to manage our elephants on sound bio-diversity principles and sound sustainable utilisation principles. There are, of course, those who advocate that we should let nature take its course and do nothing. However in Botswana's circumstances, doing nothing would not only mean loss of bio-diversity, but also loss of elephants through starvation and famine, particularly in time of drought. This is a crueller way of dying compared to professionally undertaken cropping or culling."76

COMMUNITIES, GOVERNMENTS AND CORPORATIONS: A SOUTH AFRICAN CASE STUDY

As with issues of water resource use, the history of `conservation' in Southern Africa is charged with the politics of race and disagreements over the meaning of `development'. Since the mid-19th Century, conservation policy and practise served racially-exclusive needs. During the colonial period, conservationist legislation was diametrically opposed to the holistic relationship between people and their environment that had generally characterised the culture of most indigenous African societies. Crop and livestock farming by local peoples were seen as `unnatural' and ecologically unsound. Subsistence hunters became defined as `poachers' - often by the same settler population that had once relied on this form of economic activity for its survival. The emergence of paramilitary conservation authorities, funded by the state and devoted to the armed policing of protected areas under their control, was a logical outcome of this preservationist way of conceiving the relationship between man and nature.

Beyond conservation

In the late-20th Century, this approach is no longer feasible. As suggested throughout this article, contemporary approaches to resource conservation must recognise that

• economic growth is the driving concern of business, labour and government;
  
  

• as populations grow and make more demands on government, scarce resources will be utilised; and
  
  

• conservation in its `traditional' sense is outdated and unrealisable.

Indeed, given the historical legacies of racial domination in Southern Africa, it is essential that historical approaches to `conservation' be rejected as viable forms of natural resource management.

Ecological conservation has too long been associated with the marginalisation of local communities from their lands and their resources77: "If conservation means losing water rights, losing grazing and arable land and being dumped in a resettlement area without even the most rudimentary infrastructure and services, as was the case when the Tembe elephant park [near Kosi Bay] was declared in 1983 ... this can only promote a vigorous `anti-conservation' ideology amongst the rural community of South Africa."78

Increasingly, where governments take decisions without consulting local communities, conflicts ensue and, in cases of conservation area or national parks creation, several diverse impacts materialise: relocation of indigenous peoples, restricted access of indigenous peoples to park resources, disruption of traditional ways of life, often including a decline in traditional patterns of authority and reciprocity, and widespread hostility leading to the setting of fires, vandalism and resource poaching.79 In South Africa, conservation policy has long been a nexus of violent conflict.

St. Lucia: Toward sustainable utilisation?

Debates over natural resource use continue to be dominated by those with the time and capital to devote to these issues. The multi-year debate over proposed mining of the dunes north of St. Lucia along South Africa's east coast is one example. Involved in this dispute were, on the one hand, Richards Bay Minerals (RBM), which sought to mine titanium in an area considered by many to be worthy of World Heritage Site status; and, on the other hand, a number of environmental and labour groups either permanently of temporarily opposed to the plan. The issue first arose in the latter part of 1989 and was temporarily `resolved' four years later when an independent tribunal headed by Justice R N Leon found in favour of the environmentalists and decided to ban mining from St. Lucia. According to an International Development Research Centre (IDRC) sponsored study, "the St. Lucia wetland comprises an estuary, a string of lakes and wildlife reserves, and is the cutflow of a number of Natal's rivers. For almost a century, its wildlife areas have been managed by the Natal Parks Board. The complex of terrestrial, estuarine and marine systems include rare mangrove forests, turtle breeding areas, tropical forest systems, and coral reefs."80

RBM was keen to strip mine titanium over a 1 400 square kilometre section of St. Lucia dunes. Reserves of the strategic mineral were said to be worth R5 billion and the government revenues to be derived worth R1 billion. The site was chosen over similar sites in the US and Madagascar, in part, because anti-mining environmental lobby groups had pressured the company to look elsewhere.

At the same time, the site seemed ideal: RBM already had a large mine and processing plant 25 kilometres south of the dunes at Richards Bay Harbour. Moreover, its supporters argued, location of the mine in South Africa would allow the country to monopolise world supply of titanium.81 Titanium is used in the construction of military aircraft and weaponry, more specifically in the production of durable and lightweight aircraft skins and warhead coatings, and as a substitute for lead in paint.

To many observers the mine seemed a fait accompli: the prospect of large foreign currency earnings for the government, coupled with the strategic content of the product, seemed to overshadow the more `mundane' considerations of environmental conservation. Nevertheless, once the issue came into the public eye, a formidable coalition of environmentalists emerged to argue against mining and for eco-tourism.

This confrontation must be understood in its global context, as notions of `eco-tourism' became very fashionable in the late 1980s, particularly in response to the widespread deforestation of the Amazon in Brazil. Indeed, South African environmental groups adopted global tactics in the fight against RBM, first by attempting to have St. Lucia's dunes declared a World Heritage Site along the lines of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, and secondly, by turning to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and its designation of St. Lucia as an area of extreme biological diversity worthy of preservation. Thirdly, they not merely argued for the conservation of the dunes area, but for the practise of `sustainable development', a concept which had gained international notoriety following the 1987 publication of the Brundtland Commission's Report, Our Common Future.82

These emerging global norms and ideals, particularly that of `sustainable development', in combination with white South Africa's abiding interest in conservation, turned informed public opinion against the RBM. At the same time, under South Africa's system of Integrated Environmental Management (IEM), an EIA was commissioned for St. Lucia and carried out by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).83 The study which emerged, is widely regarded as a `landmark' in the struggle for sustainable development and steers away from the hitherto dominating mineral-based mentality in South Africa. It considered two options: mining in combination with some eco-tourism (that favoured by RBM); and eco-tourism only (that favoured by the environmental lobby).

The conservationists fought RBM, not only in terms of the mine's capacity to spoil the environment, but in terms of what kind of economic development would be most profitable in the long term for the St. Lucia area. Tourists come to South Africa, it is argued, first and foremost for the flora and fauna. Tourism is a big business, bringing in an average of 1,7 million visitors per year in the pre-1994 period, directly employing 300 000 people (i.e. one out of every fourteen `actively employed' South Africans), and generating R2,5 billion in foreign exchange per year. With an end to violence in the post-apartheid era, tourism's contribution to GDP will be larger than the mining sector. Moreover, tourism, and in particular eco-tourism, is an industry with an unlimited shelflife. In contrast, mining involves the stripping of assets which are eventually exhausted. In the case of the proposed mine at St. Lucia, operation of the mine and its eventual rehabilitation would commence after 2000 and last for only twenty years.

Among the environmentalists, the Group for Environmental Monitoring (GEM) emerged as the premier think tank for progressives. Two of its members, Jacklyn Cock, a professor of Sociology, and Eddie Koch, a well-known journalist, published an influential and award-winning book entitled Going Green: People, Politics and the Environment in South Africa. Also in 1991, two labour leaders, Rod Crompton of the Chemical Workers Industrial Union and Alec Erwin of the National Union of Metalworkers, published a book, Green at the Grassroots: Politics and Environment in South Africa.

In January 1993, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) came out with a compromise position. In the short term, they stood opposed to mining in the dunes. In the longer term, however, they suggested that mining may have to go ahead. Their decision was based, in part, on the desire to see the issue put before a post-apartheid government, and thereby re-examined in a more equitable context.84 However, since there remained substantial differences of opinion within both NUM and the ANC, neither actor could make a definitive intervention. Indeed, according to the IDRC, "[w]hilst ANC economists favoured the mining option, President Nelson Mandela was one of 40 000 signatories who favoured protecting the dunes."85

In March 1993, RBM released information outlining the benefits from a mixed mining and eco-tourism approach. In their 1989 claims, RBM stated simply that 130 jobs would be created, R1 billion in government revenues would be generated, and that the mining company would contribute R8 million per year to `social responsibility programmes'. In the post-Rio era they were more sophisticated in their calculations: "Mining combined with eco-tourism will generate R460 million for RBM as well as R196 million for the Natal Parks Board from tourism activities. This option will create more that 900 temporary and permanent jobs, 613 in the mining operations as well as up to 392 posts in the tourism industry. The new mine will indirectly generate between 1 275 and 4 675 jobs through the multiplier effect, pay R157,1 million to the government in tax and earn R606 million in forex. The company will also spend R8 million on social upliftment programmes in a region where poverty ranks with `the lower levels of the lower-income countries of the world'."86

Supporters of the `eco-tourism only' option came to see the EIA process as biased in favour of the mining option. For example, how could it be that, during the scoping process, the US Embassy and the Atomic Energy Corporation were identified as "interested and affected parties", while indigenous peoples were completely ignored?87 In September 1993, John Ledger, director of the Endangered Wildlife Trust, suggested that the environmental coalition face facts: at some point RBM would get the go ahead, so it was imperative to think of a win-win situation whereby members of the St. Lucia community could be involved in some form of sustainable eco-tourism.88

A continuing criticism of the EIA, in particular, and of the entire dialogue between business and the environmental lobby, was that the voices and concerns of indigenous people were ill-considered at best, and not considered relevant at worst. According to Webster and Cock, "[a] criticism made by a number of commentators was that the views of only a small proportion of the South African public were presented in the Environmental Impact Report; that the views of local people had not been adequately reflected; that the attitudes of local communities needed to be canvassed and submitted to a Review panel. To address these concerns the `Rural Liaison Programme' was subsequently established."89

Yet, for Webster and Cock, this process "failed to achieve any deep and extensive process of consultation", having gone no further than "employed workers, traditional tribal authority structures and one Inkatha official."90

To the surprise of almost everyone, the decision handed down by Justice Leon's Review Panel on 10 December 1993 went in favour of the `eco-tourism only' option. Environmentalists were "amazed and delighted", and in spite of a promise by the Minister for Mineral and Energy Affairs to uphold the decision of the Review Panel, no decision was taken prior to the April 1994 election.

While this decision obviously pleased environmentalists and the Natal Parks Board, David Fig, director of GEM, lamented the absence of communal groups from the decision-making process. According to Fig, "[u]nless local communities are given a full say, right from the start, in decisions about the different ways in which their land can be used for economic development it will be impossible to promote popular support for these projects."91 The local community had sought return of the land for their own designated purposes.92 At the same time, many members of the local community, Natal Parks Board workers and trade unionists favoured development of the proposed mine and the jobs it would create. In the absence of popular participation in the decision-making process, Fig warned, "[t]here is no doubt [the tribunal's decision on St. Lucia] ... will be seen by these people as yet another autocratic decision to protect the rights of animals and wealthy tourists before those of ordinary people. They will resist it - and there is a grave possibility of violence." Ironically, new land dispensations under the Government of National Unity (GNU) suggest that those communities forcibly removed from the area in the 1960s may possess title to the affected land. The GNU is being "asked to reopen the Environmental Impact Assessment process and to widen the scope of participation."93

SOME GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

This article has presented a relatively limited picture of factors affecting and movement toward environmental co-operation in Southern Africa states, with a particular focus on water and conservation issues in South Africa and Zimbabwe. With regard to the potential for the environment to serve as a focal point for national and regional healing as opposed to continued disease and debilitation, the evidence is clearly mixed. The forces for the status quo are undoubtedly legion and powerful. At the same time, non-state and non-corporate actors continue to press their interests. Given the present trend toward democratisation and more open state-civil society dialogue, it seems reasonable to suggest that past practises can be overcome.

Indeed, there are many other hopeful signs as well:

• pressure from IGOs and international NGOs on business to practise and participate in sustainable development;
  
  

• attempts by civil associations to foster indigenous NGOs, link with them regionally and perhaps build a core in each group to deal with commonly shared problems94;
  
  

• the commitment of some IGOs - like the UNDP's Africa 2000 - to environmental education, resource training, popular participation and peoples' empowerment at village level95; and
  
  

• the clever use of limited resources by NGOs, like Earthlife Africa and Environment 2000, to heighten peoples' environmental awareness on both basic (e.g. litter, recycling) and complex but key issues, such as nuclear power, thermal pollution, and toxic waste.

What is important is that these issues transcend class, race and state in almost every case. Though they constitute sites of continuing conflict, support for environmental issues often makes for very strange bedfellows. As such, they hold forth the hope of new coalitions within civil society at national, regional and international levels; and between civil society, the state and capital.

Formal institutional structures, such as Social Impact Assessments (SIAs) and EIAs, can foster dialogue and co-operation. SIAs can assess the social sustainability and other social implications of proposed projects96, while EIAs can address their ecological sustainability. It is imperative that proposed solutions seek to avoid zero-sum scenarios, and search for variable and relatively equitable pay-offs. Stakeholders have different preference curves, so consensus and enhanced co-operation may be possible

ENDNOTES

B Leleka in Sam Moyo, Phil O'Keefe & Michael Sill (eds.), The Southern African Environment: Profiles of the SADC States, Earthscan, London, 1993.



Thomas F Homer-Dixon, Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases, International Security, 19(1), Summer 1994; Thomas F Homer-Dixon, On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict, International Security, 16(2), Fall 1991; Val Percival, Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict: The Case of South Africa, unpublished manuscript, Toronto, April 1995.



See especially, Jacklyn Cock & Eddie Koch, Going Green: People, Politics and the Environment in South Africa, Oxford University Press, Cape Town; Mamphela Ramphele & Chris McDowell (eds.), Restoring the Land: Environment and Change in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Panos, London, 1991.



Ramphele & MacDowell, ibid., p. 14.



SADC, The State of Southern Africa's Environment, Panos, Johannesburg, 1995 (pre-publication draft); Moyo et. al., op. cit.; Cock & Koch, op. cit.; ibid.; SADC, Sustaining our Common Future, SADC-ELMS, Maseru, 1991 (special report for UNCED Secretariat).



Barry Munslow & Patrick Fitzgerald, South Africa: The Sustainable Development Challenge, Third World Quarterly, 15(2), 1994 (pre-publication draft); SADC, ibid.; GEM, Sustainable Development for Beginners, Group for Environmental Monitoring (GEM) Discussion Document, October 1991.



Rachel Wynberg, Exploring the Earth Summit - Findings of the Rio United Nations Conference on Environment and Development: Implications for South Africa, Penrose, Johannesburg, 1993.



See for example, Mark W Imber, The Environment, Security and UN Reform, Macmillan, London, 1994.



Neil Middleton, Phil O'Keefe & Sam Moyo, Tears of the Crocodile, Pluto, London, 1993.



Larry A Swatuk & Timothy M Shaw (eds.), The South at the End of the Twentieth Century, Macmillan, London, 1994.



Brian Huntley, Roy Siegfried & Clem Sunter, South African Environments into the 21st Century, Human & Rousseau, Cape Town, 1989.



Kagiso P Keatimilwe, Environmental Management over the Last Two Decades: Experiences and Challenges for the Southern Africa Sub-regional Environmental Group, unpublished manuscript, 1992.



Albert M Greve et. al., National Environmental Action Plans in sub-Saharan Africa, World Bank, Washington, 1995, p. 1.



World Bank, Toward Environmentally Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A World Bank Agenda, 1995, p. 69.



SADC, op. cit.



Jefferis, personal communication, Gaborone.



James H Mittelman, The Globalization Challenge: Surviving the Margins, Third World Quarterly, 15(3), September 1994; Swatuk & Shaw, op. cit.



Fantu Cheru, Rethinking Development Strategies for Africa in the Age of Globalisation, in Adebyo Adedeji (ed.), South Africa and Africa: Within or Apart?, Zed Books, London, 1996; Rob Davies, Emerging South African Perspectives on Regional Cooperation and Integration after Apartheid, in Bertil Oden (ed.), Southern Africa after Apartheid: Regional Integration and External Resources, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala, 1993; Larry A Swatuk, Prospects for Southern African Regional Integration after Apartheid, Journal of the Third World Spectrum, 1(2), Fall 1994.



Robert Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy, The Atlantic Monthly, February 1994; see also, Homer-Dixon, op. cit.; Percival, op. cit.



John Bardill, Sources of Domestic Instability in Southern African States, Backgrounder, 12, 1994; Thomas Ohlson & Stephen John Stedman, The New is not yet Born: Conflict and Conflict Resolution in Southern Africa, Brookings Institute, Washington, 1994; Thomas Ohlson & Stephen John Stedman, Towards Enhanced Regional Security in Southern Africa?, in Oden, op. cit., 1993.



Larry A Swatuk & David R Black, The `New' South Africa in Africa: Issues and Opportunities, Journal of the Third World Spectrum, 2(2), January 1996; Swatuk, op. cit.; see also The Economist, 20-26 May 1995, pp. 20-24.



See for example, Laurie Nathan, `With Open Arms': Confidence- and Security-building Measures in Southern Africa, paper read at the Seminar on Confidence- and Security-building in Southern Africa, United Nations for Disarmament Affairs, Windhoek, February 1993; Laurie Nathan, A Framework and Strategy for Building Peace and Security in Southern Africa, Centre for Intergroup Studies, Cape Town, 1992 (unpublished working paper); Larry A Swatuk & Abillah H Omari, Regional Security: Southern Africa's `Mobile' Frontline, in Swatuk & Black, op. cit.



Quoted in Cock & Koch, op. cit., p. 17.



According to Homer-Dixon, there is a distressing tendency to misrepresent his work by over-emphasising the acute conflict potential of a situation and to underestimate the conflict-avoidance mechanisms that often arise in response to situations of either environmental scarcity or resource use/allocation disputes (personal communication, Toronto, April 1995; see also, Homer-Dixon, op. cit.; Percival, op. cit.)



Ernst B Haas, Words Can Hurt You: Who Said What to Whom about Regimes, in Stephen Krasner (ed.), International Regimes, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1983, p. 57.



See figure in Southern Africa Report, July 1994.



Kenneth Brower, Devouring the Earth, The Atlantic Monthly, November 1994.



SADC, op. cit., pp. 21-22.



See also, Moyo et. al., op. cit., for extended and informed discussions of these problems.



Munslow & Fitzgerald, op. cit.; John Yeld, Caring for the Earth: South Africa, A Strategy for Sustainable Living, SANF, Stellenbosch.



Interviews with Reichardt, Anglo American, Johannesburg, September 1994; Tillet, Lonrho, Harare, July & September 1994; Chiura, Delta Corporation, Harare, July &September 1994.



Africa Institute of South Africa, South Africa in Sub-equatorial Africa: Economic Interaction, Pretoria, April 1994; see also, SADC, op. cit., p. 19.



African Development Bank, Economic Integration in Southern Africa: Executive Summary, Harare, 1994, p. 39.



Moyo et. al., op. cit., p. 39.



Interviews with Matiza-Chiuta, IUCN, Harare, July 1994; Marsh, New Zealand VSA, September 1994, Harare.



Moyo, et. al., op. cit., pp. 146-148.



SARDC, Southern African Environmental Issues No 7: Factsheet, CEP Factsheet.



Cock & Koch, op. cit.



Yeld, op. cit., p. 33.



Ibid., p. 32.



Interview with Matiza-Chiuta, op. cit.



Africa Institute, op. cit., pp. 40-46.



Moyo, et. al., op. cit., p. 220.



IDRC, et. al., Environment, Reconstruction and Development in the New South Africa, report of the IDRC, ANC, COSATU, SACP, SANCO Mission on Environmental Policy, August 1994.



Clive van Horen, Anton Eberhard, Hilton Trollip & Stephen Thorne, Energy, Environment and Urban Poverty in South Africa, Energy Policy, May 1993, p. 624.



Eskom estimate cited in ibid.



Ibid.



Ibid., p. 635.



Ibid.



Ibid.



Ibid., p. 637.



Moyo et. al., op. cit., p. 326.



H M Masundire, Effects of Dam Building on Riverine Wetlands, in T Matiza & S A Crafter (eds.), Wetlands Ecology and Priorities for Conservation in Zimbabwe: Proceedings of a Seminar on Wetlands Ecology, Harare, 13 -15 January 1992, IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, [n.d.].



C Machena, Dam Developments and their Environmental Effect: The Kariba Experience, in T Matiza & H N Chabwela (eds.), Wetlands Conservation Conference for Southern Africa: Proceedings of the SADCC Wetlands Conference held in Gaborone, Botswana 3 - 5 June 1991, IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, 1992, p. 28.



Masundire, op. cit., p. 97.



Ibid.



Machena, op. cit., p. 30.



Herald (Harare), 15 July 1994; a similar phenomenon has marked developments around the construction of the Katse Dam in Lesotho, see interview with Matlosa, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, June 1994; see also, A V R Massinga, Dam Developments and Their Environmental Effects, in Matiza & Chabwela, op. cit., pp. 43-57, for a general discussion of costs and benefits of dam construction.



David J Lazlo, Environmentally Sound Management of the Zambezi River Basin, International Journal of Water Resources Management, 4(2), June 1988, p. 81.



Ibid., p. 85.



Ibid., p. 88.



Ibid.



SARDC, op. cit.



Ibid., pp. 92-102.



Ibid.



Interviews with Marsh, op. cit.; Moyo-Mhlanga, UNDP, Harare, 1994.



Africa Environmental Bulletin, 1994, p. 7; see also, The Sunday Mail (Harare), 17 July 1994.



Interview with Moyo-Mhlanga, op. cit.



Interview with Moyo-Mhlanga, op. cit.



There were no representatives from Mozambican groups or farms at the seminar, though the Save/Runde floodplain borders on and extends into Mozambique.



Interview with Droz, IUCN, Harare, 1994.



Interview with Matiza-Chiuta, op. cit.



Kudzai Makombe, Sharing the Land: Wildlife, People and Development in Africa, IUCN/ROSA Environmental Issues Series, 1, 1993.



See Munslow & Fitzgerald, op. cit., for a discussion of sustainable livelihood.



See also, GEM, People and Parks Project 1994: National Conference Proceedings, Johannesburg, 1994.



African European Institute, Post-apartheid Regional Cooperation: International Support for Transforming Southern Africa, AEI, The Hague, 1992, (conference report), pp. 51 & 52; CITES refers to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.



Eddie Webster & Jacklyn Cock, Looking before They Leap: Environmental Impact Assessments and Social Impact Assessments, unpublished paper, 1994; they have been theorising ways around this fact. One proposed solution is to introduce `social impact assessments' alongside `environmental impact assessments' when considering resource use.



Anti-conservationism or anti-environmentalism goes beyond the individual or community level. According to Barney Desai, senior member of the PAC, "[f]or the majority of black states whose lives and aspirations are dictated by the struggle for survival, environmental considerations are regarded with indifference or hostility"; see Weekly Mail & Guardian, 16 - 22 November 1990.



This list is drawn from Webster & Cock, op. cit.; see also the sectional, country based discussions on Resource Use Conflicts in Moyo et. al., op. cit.



IDRC et. al., op. cit., p. 40.



According to the IDRC report (ibid., p. 41), RBM, which is jointly owned by Rio Tinto Zinc and by the local mining conglomerate Genmin, "is aiming to corner 25 per cent of world market share. In anticipation of this, it has constructeda titanium smelting plant at Richard's Bay."



Indeed, in the Environmental Conservation Act, no. 73 of 1989, which came to replace the earlier 1982 Act, South African policy makers have clearly adopted the Brundtland Commission's definition of `sustainable development'; see also endnote 83.



In 1982, the South African Council for the Environment was established under the terms of the Environmental Conservation Act, no. 100 of 1982. This Act was subsequently replaced by the Environmental Conservation Act, no. 73 of 1989. Among the Council's executive committees and commissions is one concerned with Integrated Environmental Management. Among its working definitions are conservation and development. `Conservation' is defined as "management of man's use of the environment so that it may yield the greatest sustainable benefit to present generations while maintaining its potential to meet the needs and aspirations of future generations." `'Development' is defined as "utilization of natural resources and the consequent modification of the environment by man to satisfy human needs and improve the quality of human life." The Council considers conservation and development to be part of an integrated system of environmental management. The IEM system was established in 1984. IEM identifies three categories of proposed actions: policies, programmes and projects. All proposed actions pass through four stages of development: proposal generation; assessment; decision; and implementation. Given that some proposals have more serious environmental implications than others, IEM identifies three classes of assessment: high impact; some impact; and negligible impact. The RBM proposal clearly fell in the first class.



Weekly Mail & Guardian, 22 - 28 January 1993.



IDRC, et. al., op. cit., p. 41.



Weekly Mail & Guardian, 19 - 25 March 1993.



IDRC, et. al., op. cit., p. 41.



Weekly Mail & Guardian, 17 - 23 September 1993.



Webster & Cock, op. cit., p. 8.



Ibid., pp. 8-13.



Weekly Mail & Guardian, 17 - 22 December 1993.



As it happens, the very land to be mined was part of the traditional lands of the community which had been forcibly removed in the 970s when the park was established. Clearly, indigenous peoples trusted neither RBM, the Natal Parks Board - which had failed to defend them against their earlier removal - nor the EIA process.



IDRC, et. al., op. cit., p. 42.



Interview with Mbogori, Harare, July 1994; MWENGO & AACC, Civil Society, the State and African Development in the 1990s, Central Graphics Services, Nairobi, 1993.



Interview with Moyo-Mhlanga, op. cit.



Webster & Cock, op. cit.