Chairperson, I want to congratulate the Minister on his budget speech. Gauteng will be supporting him.
We particularly want to congratulate him on the excellent work that he is doing in tourism. That issue will be addressed by the other special delegate from Gauteng, Sheila Weinberg.
The complexity of this portfolio makes it, I am sure, a very challenging and interesting one for the Minister. There is a very complex set of issues relating to the interdependency of tourism and the environment. He has shown particular initiative and we want to congratulate him on the energy that he has brought to this portfolio. As he has told the House today, he has taken very active steps to extend to areas that are committed to conservation in this country.
Recently I heard him say, and I think that he is completely correct, that never in the history of this country has there been so much attention given to extending the conservation status of land across the length and breadth of the country.
With the support of the Deputy Minister, he has consistently taken our commitments very seriously and entered into international protocols. This has seen South Africa increasingly become a very important player and take leadership positions in the debates, and international conventions and structures that lead to those protocols.
We also want to congratulate him today on the launch of his White Paper for Sustainable Coastal Development and for the principles that are contained within that document. We need to balance stewardship and caring for our very valuable and beautiful coastline with the opportunities and benefits that those resources can bring in a socially responsible way.
The Minister is most famous, at the moment, for his war against the national flower of the plastic bag. I will be talking a little bit more about that later in my speech.
My main concern, and the subject that I will restrict myself to in my comments in this debate, is the issue of the environment. This is Environment Week; yesterday we celebrated World Environment Day.
I do not think that there is anyone in this House who needs to be reminded that there are very serious consequences for our resources in terms of the exploitative patterns of the past. Massive environmental degradation has taken place across the length and breadth of the country, but particularly in those areas where there has been mining, agricultural and industrial activity. It has very serious consequences for all of us in terms of a degraded and polluted environment and also in terms of the way that our resources have been exploited and depleted.
The Minister faces several key challenges and those challenges, for me, can be summarised in terms of how he takes forward our national and constitutional commitments to sustainable development in a way in which we mainstream that, so that the responsibility for sustainable development is not seen as his alone or that of particularly related environmental ministries.
Environmental concerns should be mainstreamed in our housing and health policies and the development of infrastructure in our local governments, thereby including all our parliamentarians, our chairpersons of portfolio committees and everyone who participates in decision-making around the development of infrastructure, so that they deeply understand the environmental consequences of the decisions that they are taking. So the first challenge to the Minister is to see that environmental concerns and the viability of our country for the following generations are mainstreamed across development in all Government portfolios.
The second area in which I believe that the Minister has enormous responsibility - and people have spoken very eloquently about that today - is in the field of educating the public about the importance of our environmental commitments. Rev Moatshe spoke about a history of dispossession and the reality that so many South Africans live in deeply degraded environments, and where the opportunities to appreciate and enjoy the beauty that we have all spoken about so eloquently is not the experience of the majority of South Africans, but the experience of the visitors that we bring to this country. It is our responsibility to increase access so that people begin to understand much more meaningfully what it is that we are cherishing in our conservation areas.
In Gauteng we have been working with the Gauteng Institute of Curriculum Development to prepare learning materials for teachers and students in all schools in Gauteng, to ensure that environmental education becomes a very deep part of the curriculum experiences of children in Gauteng. I will be returning to the issue of public understanding again and again in the other issues that I raise.
The third responsibility, in addition to mainstreaming and educating, is the responsibility that I believe that the Minister holds centrally in co- ordinating intergovernmental and interministerial relations in terms of environmental matters. We are all aware that the National Environmental Management Act gave him the authority to establish the committee on environmental co-ordination. I feel very strongly that the responsibility that he must take in leading that committee is to ensure that the possible existing fragmentation of environmental responsibilities across the different affected Ministries is effectively managed by the person who holds the portfolio responsible for the environment in this country.
Clearly those environmental responsibilities constitutionally cut across both local, provincial and national government. But I am particularly concerned about the environmental consequences of previous mining activity in Gauteng. I am particularly concerned about the way in which dust pollution and run-off water seriously affect the health and wellbeing of citizens, often particularly the most disadvantaged and poorest people in Gauteng.
It is clear that there has been inadequate rehabilitation of mining activity in Gauteng over hundreds of years. This is causing erosion of the rights of people in Gauteng, the erosion of their access to a safe and healthy environment and, very seriously, degrades their living conditions. We in the province are experiencing enormous pressure to use the National Environmental Management Act and the provisions that it contains in defence of the constitutional rights of people living in the province.
Clearly I am not comfortable in doing so. I would rather look to the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism to ensure that we, indeed, have a well-functioning system of co-operative governance so that, across those Ministries that are responsible for environmental matters, there is dedicated attention paid to such environmental degradation, and that the leadership role that he plays spanning the different provinces is well co- ordinated because, understandably, environment is a function that is properly co-ordinated at national level.
This is also an issue that cuts across not only the Department of Minerals and Energy, but also the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry. Minister Kasrils has been extraordinarily supportive of our province in the way in which he has responded to environmental degradation that falls within the responsibility of his portfolio. But today there has been a great deal of discussion, and the Minister himself has raised the challenges of waste management. I want to congratulate the Minister on the public initiative that he has taken on the issue of raising public debate around waste management, recycling and the way in which our consumerist behaviour is contributing to pollution. [Time expired.] [Applause.]