'Consultants march to the tune of developers'

Construction of the PanAfrican Parliament building in Midrand stopped nearly two years ago after an environmental group threatened legal action as it was being built on a protected wetland. The building was to house our continental legislators but was in danger of flooding after a small Highveld rainfall.

The Department of Environmental Affairs is now considering a rectification application, but some believe the site is beyond environmental remediation.

Previously, the department failed to detect misinformation in documentation submitted by Stephan Frylinck of Mpofu Environmental Consulting, who was found guilty in the Randburg Regional Court this year on charges relating to the provision of incorrect or misleading information under the National Environmental Management Act (Nema). Frylinck, who is due to be sentenced next week, was instructed by the Gauteng government to conduct a wetland delineation and seepage report. Instead, he said a stormwater pipe had burst on the site, which he failed to classify as a wetland.

The department believed him - and furthermore gave a record of decision despite no public participation process.

The story is an extreme example of government incapacity to protect natural resources. This failure focuses attention on the weaknesses elsewhere. "The authorities are often more incompetent than the environmental assessment practitioners, so the practitioners are able to bullshit them," is the upfront explanation of one environmental activist.

If environmental officials at national, provincial and municipal level are stretched, their counterparts at the Department of Mineral Resources are perhaps even more so. It is also easier to falsify public participation information required under mining legislation than it is under Nema, which requires attendance registers to be submitted.

Last week's official launch of the Environmental Assessment Practitioners' Association of SA, which will act as the authority for the compulsory registration of environmental assessment practitioners within the National Qualifications Framework, may go some way towards implementing a somewhat belated code of ethics for the industry.

The association's draft code requires members to "at all times place the integrity of the environment... above any commitment to sectional or private interests". The code naturally bans practitioners from undertaking assessments in which they have a vested or other financial interest, and says that where consultants are employed for in-house work, their assessments must be subject to review by independent practitioners.

While some environmental organisations are more concerned about fly-bynight practitioners, others say there are those among even the bigger environmental consultancies that work solely for the interests of clients: a "client conscious" approach, to use industry jargon.

They argue this is facilitated by environmental practitioners being directly financially dependent on the companies that employ them. Instead, they propose a system in which developers pay funds to an independent body, which assigns practitioners best suited for individual applications.

For now, the developer is King Client. He can choose not to employ a practitioner whose previous assessments may have been unaccommodating. He can shun those who insist on hosting public meetings, advertising them widely and transcribing minutes accurately. As long as the risk of detection is low, he can play the system to his advantage.

Ingi Salgado

Business Report

Posted at 09:05AM Apr 12, 2011 by Editor in Industry  |  Comments[1]