Cooperative environmental governance: at the coalface of sustainable infrastructure development in South Africa
Abstract
In this article, large-scale infrastructure development is situated within the
sustainability paradigm with an emphasis on questions about
environmental impact. W hile the focus is on South Africa, the article
contributes to the broader body of law and governance scholarship that
deals with the complexity inherent in the search for infrastructure
development that meets the demands of sustainability. The authors
attend specifically to the role of cooperative environmental governance
(CEG). They set out to explain the existence of and difficulty surrounding
the legal duty of the South African government to pursue sustainability via
its development-related decision-making processes. The prominence of
the notion of cooperative government in South Africa’s democratic
government system is highlighted whereafter the authors evaluate the
role of CEG in government decisions that they regard to be in need of an
inclusive and holistic approach to sustainability. The difficulty inherent in
marrying CEG with the pursuit of sustainability in large-scale project
developments is explained with specific reference to the controversial
Medupi and Kusile power station projects. In conclusion, the authors
briefly outline the provisions of the 2014 Infrastructure Development Act
and ask if and how the Act can cater for CEG through a limited
environmental impact but can still adhere to the requirements that government decisions pass the tests of the Constitution and framework
environmental legislation
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10394/18749http://reference.sabinet.co.za/webx/access/electronic_journals/sapr1/sapr1_v29_n2_a11.pdf.pdf
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