Hon Deputy Speaker, hon Ministers and Deputy Ministers, hon members, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I rise on behalf of the ANC, and happily on behalf of the whole Portfolio Committee on Water and Environmental Affairs, to recommend to this House the adoption of the amendments in the National Environmental Management Laws First Amendment Bill, which the portfolio committee adopted unanimously.
The National Environmental Management Laws First Amendment Bill was introduced and referred to the portfolio committee in May of this year. The Bill is a composite Amendment Bill which seeks to amend five pieces of environmental legislation.
The portfolio committee processed the introduced Bill by receiving briefings from the department, calling for written submissions, and hosting public hearings for oral submissions by the public. The portfolio committee then engaged in a lengthy and detailed deliberation on this Bill to try and process the amendments to five Bills.
After deliberations, the portfolio committee proposed that the Bill be split into two Bills, and proposed the immediate passing of the National Environmental Management Laws First Amendment Bill. This we are doing now, in order to amend the following five Acts: the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act, Act 10 of 2004, the National Environmental Management: Air Quality Act, Act 39 of 2004, the National Environmental Management: Waste Act, Act 59 of 2008, the National Environmental Management Laws Amendment Act, 2008, and the National Environmental Management: Protected Areas Amendment Act, Act 57 of 2009.
The portfolio committee further agreed that the proposed amendments in the introduced Bill to the National Environmental Management Act, commonly known as Nema, which is the only Bill of the original composite Bill which is not being passed today, require further deliberations, as they raise serious constitutional, legal, political and practical challenges, in respect of which the portfolio committee requires further information, legal advice and proposed amendments. These amendments will be processed at the beginning of next year in a separate Bill, when the necessary information, advice and amendments are placed before and processed by the committee as a second Amendment Bill or as an amendment to Nema.
The intention with the splitting of the Bills was that the first Amendment Bill, being passed today, would deal with the noncontroversial and urgent amendments to our main biodiversity law, which we know by the acronym, Nemba. The second Amendment Bill, then, will deal with the further amendments next year to Nema.
The biodiversity amendments are regarded as very urgent, as they address most of the present challenges we face relating to the permitting system in respect of listed, threatened or protected species - for example, rhinoceros - and alien and invasive species. The amendments to Nema are more complex, of course, and need further deliberation.
I now deal with the actual amendments to the five Amendment Bills within the composite Bill, which we are passing today. Most of the proposed amendments in the first amendment formed part of the introduced Bill and a few more were added from our consultation process during the deliberations of the committee. All these extra amendments were aimed at reducing loopholes in areas of uncertainty in the present Acts, by mainly facilitating the implementation of the Threatened or Protected Species Regulations in their amended form and the Alien and Invasive Species Regulations. The first Amendment Bill proposes substantial amendments to the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act. The other four Acts listed above have more minor and technical amendments.
The first Bill to be amended, the Biodiversity Bill, aims to, amongst other things, achieve the following. The Bill adds one further objective to the Biodiversity Act in order to emphasise the need to protect the ecosystem as a whole, including species which are not targeted for exploitation. The Bill revises the purposes of Chapter 4 in the Biodiversity Act in order to provide for the regulation of threatened and indigenous species to ensure that the utilisation of these species is done in an ecologically sustainable manner.
The Bill ensures that species, both listed and nonlisted, are properly regulated. Many species that are commercially utilised, for example on game farms, are not of national importance or of a high conservation value, but the hunting of the nonlisted species needs to be regulated to prevent overutilisation. It is also important to regulate these indigenous species that are not of a high conservation value in order to prevent the inclusion of such species in one of the threatened categories in future. Therefore, the Bill provides for the regulation of these indigenous species that are not of a high conservation value in order to make sure that they are sustainably utilised. The Bill addresses some of the challenges in the present permit system with respect to the hunting of listed, threatened or protected species, and activities involving alien species or listed invasive species. Currently, the permit system is being abused by ruthless individuals or syndicates to legally obtain threatened or protected species, such as rhinoceros horn. The Minister has already mentioned the recent case of the Thai gentleman who came here and was found guilty, and then ... [Interjections.] ... well, he is not such a gentleman, no. He then called upon South African ubuntu, and in true South African manner, we bestowed all ubuntu upon him - and only gave him 40 years for his sins! Let's hope that ubuntu keeps on working in these magical ways. [Laughter.]
HON MEMBERS: Hear, Hear!