I believe the government will give the green light.....it has been delayed to November to avoid media attention from the Durban conference. MRC has to be the cheapest mining in the world!
The Wildlife and Environment Society of SA (WESSA) understands that the decision on the controversial N2 toll road has been delayed until after the World Parks Conference (WPC) and it's thought that this is in order to avoid negative publicity during the event. The road is a proposed four-lane tolled highway that would cut through a globally-recognised bio-diversity hotspot, the proposed Pondoland Park and the Pondoland centre of endemism. The road is a private-sector initiative by a toll consortium. Two massive suspension bridges spanning pristine gorges would be paid for by the tax-payer. The announced decision by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) as to whether the road would be allowed, was due in late June and has now reportedly been delayed till mid-November.
"If it's true that the decision is being delayed in order to avoid negative global publicity at the WPC," says WESSA's conservation director Cathy Kay, "it means that DEAT knows a decision in favour of the road is not in the interests of the South African environment. Why else would they want to avoid making a controversial decision like this if they were not aware that they would be criticised globally for this move?"
In the foreword to the WPC official brochure, Minister for Environmental Affairs and Tourism Valli Moosa writes the following: "The health of numerous eco-systems around the world has gone into sharp decline and extinction rates have grown alarmingly. The impacts of these losses of natural diversity on natural and human systems have yet to be measured to their full extent, but we cannot afford the luxury of waiting to find out. Conservation is in crisis, and protected areas represent a critical bulwark against further decline. Unless protected areas are expanded to incorporate such unprecedented bio-diversity outside nature reserves, conservation faces a bleak future."
Kay says,"I want to challenge the minister on his commitment to bio- diversity. On the one hand he names SA's bio-diversity as its greatest treasure �Eand on the other he appears to support putting a highway right through the middle of one of the country's most important centres of endemism �Ea globally recognised bio-diversity hotspot.
"The Minister must stop paying lip service to conservation and declare himself to the world. If he believes that a major highway through an area that botanists describe as irreplaceable makes good sense environmentally, then why won't he announce his decision during the World Parks Conference?
"If he in fact gets up at the conference and praises SA's bio-diversity, and then a few weeks later announces that the road can go ahead, then the minister and his department are lying to the country and to the world."
On Monday 8, the eve of the Durban Conference, the Save the Wild Coast Coalition - in conjunction with the South African Council of Churches - will be holding a public meeting in Kokstad, one of the towns that will be most affected if the road goes ahead. The aim is to highlight concerns about the negative socio-economic impact that the road will have on the rural communities of the Transkei. Another concern is the proposed mining of the coastal dunes in the Pondoland Park and in the marine protected area.
Members of the coalition are planning to picket the World Parks Conference to highlight their concern. The issue has attracted the attention of the international media who are attending the event.
"The theme of this conference is ‘Benefits Beyond Boundaries'," says Kay. "But here we have the government preparing to sacrifice the benefits that should come from conservation for short-term economic gain."
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(20min delay)