IAIAsa 2010 National Conference
CSIR CONVENTION CENTRE, PRETORIA, GAUTENG
23 – 25 August 2010

INTEGRATING ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

South Africa’s sustainable development model requires a healthy environment for social well-being, as a prerequisite for economic prosperity. It highlights that economic, social and ecological systems are integrated via a governance structure that holds all the other systems together by means of a legitimate regulatory framework.  The extent to which physical and biological issues will influence future development is therefore the primary focus of impact assessment. This is underscored by the Constitution that emphasises management measures that “secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources”.

The South African Law reform process introduced various laws that embrace environmental protection as a core objective in achieving sustainability. Integrated Environmental Management (IEM) has been promoted as an acceptable approach to achieve ecologically sustainable development and a set of principles was introduced to guide decisions towards ensuring socio-economic sustainability.  However, the concept of IEM has been described as a “philosophical UFO that has not yet landed”.  The detail of what this practise entails needs to be unpacked.

South Africa as an international player has been subject to critical international economic challenges that have radically altered the development playing field. This is in conjunction with growing awareness of climate change issues and need to reduce our carbon footprint.  Despite such pressing concerns, practitioners in South Africa are forced to grapple with an overregulated EIA process that is becoming so complex that we remain fixed on process issues, forgetting purpose and outcomes.  Is it time for us to go back to the drawing board and accept that we may have lost focus (and direction)?  As practitioners we frequently ask the following questions of ourselves and those around us:

• We operate within the discipline of sustainable development but we find it difficult to define sustainability. How then must we know what we are working towards?
• We are still grappling with the concept of integration. Perhaps we are not sure what exactly should be integrated and what the desired end result of this integration should be.
• Do we understand IEM properly, and especially how Impact Assessment relates to this concept?
• We prevent/mitigate impacts and facilitate trade-offs with a focus on sustainability which we have not yet defined; yet all evidence suggests that the environment is deteriorating at alarming rates.  Where are we failing in what we do?
• We want to improve our approaches, procedures and methods of impact assessment, with the ultimate goal of helping meet today’s needs without compromising the opportunities of future generations. How do we achieve this when we are not sure what is at the core of our processes, priorities and outcomes?

The application of IEM in South Africa requires that impacts and aspects of all stages of all activities are assessed and managed.  It involves the integration of many role-players - environmental practitioners, the government and society at large. It also highlights the ‘narrow’ role of impact assessment in IEM.  This has implications for our discipline and the development of best practice and we need to ask some critical questions:

• What is our role in IEM as assessment practitioners and what should we be integrating?
• Who is responsible for securing environmental protection and who facilitates trade-offs?
• What is the relationship between environmental planners and development planners? And who are the sustainable development planners?

The 2010 IAIAsa Conference would like to introduce a debate that explores the critical questions outlined above. We would like to unpack the notion of environment vs development, as well as the disciplines, responsibilities, approaches and methods associated with assessment and environmental management.  Considering that we wish to move from project-level EIA to strategic approaches and that we want to promote the organisation’s “new vision” (professionalism, best practice in strategic assessment, as well as use of other assessment tools) the theme should also promote strong debate about IEM and desired outcomes of assessment (environmental protection vs sustainability).
Sub-themes that would be reviewed under this topic:

• Strategic tools for securing environmental protection: Biodiversity-, Air Quality-, Waste Management- and other ‘environmental’ Sector Plans; State of Environment reporting; Environmental Management Frameworks, etc.
• Planning to support a green economy: green accounting; cleaner production, waste minimisation; climate change planning, environmental management systems, etc.
• Integrating Environmental Sectors: integrating environmental sectors, policies, plans and programmes; health impact assessment; overlap with other legislation etc.
• Sector capacity: best practice standards, knowledge management, training, accreditation and registration, ethics, governance, public participation, specialist input, etc.