The Herald April 26, 2007
Guy Rogers’ Elephant Ear

MINERALS and energy department regional director Nomvuyo Ketse makes the baffling statement that she knows of no report that advocates that eco-tourism is the best option for Pondoland.

This makes no sense. It means that Ketse – apparently forthright and always helpful, and one of the key officials who will guide what development option becomes the focus in Pondoland – knows nothing about the large bundle of Wild Coast land-use planning studies, hailed as an historic breakthrough at the time, and completed in 2005.

The studies were commissioned by government and undertaken by the Wild Coast Conservation and Sustainable Development Project, led by Dr James Jackelman.

A cost benefit analysis of the mining option had already been done but, despite repeated requests from the researchers and other parties, it was never released publicly, with the dubious reason given by the department at the time that it would unfairly compromise Australian mining company Mineral Resource Commodities (MRC‘s) bid.

With no access to this information, the project focused on the exact same site as the one targeted by MRC. The thinking behind the Xolobeni Cost/ Benefits Analysis of Tourism Option study was that it would provide information which the decision-makers could compare directly against the data in the withheld mining report, Jackelman told me yesterday.

The study found that the tourism option for Xolobeni would generate 4 642 jobs during construction and 330 long-term. The revenue stream would be about R27,7-million a year and the contribution to the GDP of the region would be R412-million during construction and R39-million a year during operation.

With the mining report still withheld, it was useless in terms of the project‘s planning brief. The Xolobeni tourism report was used for their master study, the Wild Coast Spatial Development Framework – which made the specific recommendation that “the preferred land use is tourism and recreation enterprises”.

Ketse says the only report she knows of is one which says there can be a win-win mining and eco-tourism option in Pondoland. To my knowledge there is no such report in the public domain.

The one she is referring to seems to be one that is doing the rounds in government with the argument that the high yield mining blocks can be mined without damaging eco-tourism prospects.

What exactly does the mining cost benefits analysis say in terms of jobs, revenue stream and contribution to GDP? What scenarios are being bandied around without the people‘s knowledge and how are they substantiated?

We should start by getting these things on the table.

The public participation environmental advocacy coalition, Sustaining the Wild Coast, has called on Ketse‘s department to consider whether the Australian government would agree “to turn Ayers Rock (the huge sandstone dome in Northern Territories revered by the Aborigines) into a quarry, or the Great Barrier Reef into an undersea mine for calcium carbonate.

“If not, MRC has no business mining the Wild Coast for titanium,” it says.

When I put this to Ketse, she said she had no knowledge of Australian law.

“We do care for our special places as much as they do. But what we are interested in is what value the applicant is going to bring in.”

And there lies the rub. No matter how special Pondoland is, how special any aspect of our environment is, it seems, this government will always look to see what others want to make of it.

It will not simply rule that this specialness alone, in this case the globally unique mix of Pondo village culture, a myriad plant species, pristine estuaries and rivers plunging into the sea, harnessed by sustainable bottom-up eco-tourism, can bring the people wealth and should therefore be sacrosanct.

More than a decade into our democracy, this is the approach of the oppressed: it lacks pride and belief in ourselves, what we ourselves have to offer, and what we can make of it. We cannot be proudly South African while playing lip-service only to the Convention on Biodiversity or to human rights.

What we need is government to support the Human Rights Commission probe into the charges of intimidation and information suppression around the mining and then to give eco-tourism a real chance to work, to benefit local communities.

It is true that you couldn‘t take a Prius on to Pondoland‘s tortuous roads (or into Baviaanskloof), Earthlife Africa‘s Tristen Tayler concedes.

Bulging with extra fat rolls of metal, most sports utility vehicles (SUVs) are used not for nature excursions, however, but rather for commuting between the shopping mall and the gym, he argues. A 4×4 bakkie will in most cases be lighter and therefore more fuel efficient for the genuine outdoor enthusiast, and for rescue work.

If you do want to stick with an SUV, you can still press for change. California governor, uber-macho actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, once the world’s most famous driver of the gas-guzzling H1, now has a hydrogen-powered Hummer.

GMSA has just announced to some fanfare the price of its new Hummer H3 (R374 000). But the point is not how much these vehicles cost but, rather, how easily an SUV buyer “can do things differently and help save the planet”, says Tayler, whose organisation fights under the banner of environmental and social justice. Instead of an SUV, why not a hybrid, which alternates between petrol and electricity, or even a hydrogen vehicle?

Hydrogen technology needs a lot of energy so the caveat is that this energy must be clean, not coal-fired. But, once this hurdle is overcome, as it has been in California and Germany, the potential is huge. The end product of a hydrogen powered vehicle is water only.

By using a 5l vehicle instead of a 2l vehicle you are contributing to the rapid consumption of the Earth’s fuel supplies, he says. If we continue with these choices, in the next 60 years, all our fuel will be gone.

Everything relies on fuel, from food production to housing to electricity. If we run out before we have developed clean alternatives, it will make the 1930s depression look like a stock market boom.

Our whole economy could collapse. There would be mass starvation, and the poorest would be the first to suffer.

“The rich have a choice. It can be business as usual – or they can lead by example.”

Posted on April 26th, 2007
Filed under: Newspaper and Media