Hersiening van omgewingsverwante wetgewing ter verwesenliking van die reg op toegang tot voldoende voedsel

Abstract

The development of legislation for the progressive realisation of the right to access to sufficient food is labelled as an international and national objective. Section 27(2) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 assigns a compulsory mandate to the South African government to take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of the right to access to sufficient food. The United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization proposes a three-level strategy for the implementation of the right to food on a national legislative level, namely through: constitutional recognition, the implementation of a food framework law and the reviewing of relevant sectoral legislation. This study focuses on the last level of legislative provisioning, namely the reviewing of relevant sectoral legislation which influences, or possibly can, influence the realisation of the right to access to sufficient food. The right to access to sufficient food has multidimensional, interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral characteristics and consequently various sectors are involved in the realisation of the right to access to sufficient food. The Food and Agricultural Organization determines that the intended purpose will be to identify and review all sectoral legislation that might influence the availability, stability, access and adequacy of food, by means of a proposed reviewing process. The suggested reviewing process of the Food and Agricultural Organization is comprehensive and diverse and therefore the focus of this study is only based on the reviewing of relevant environmentally related legislation. The Food and Agricultural Organization does not make recommendations with regard to the specific aspects that need to be incorporated in environmental-related legislation to contribute to the progressive realisation of the right to access to sufficient food (in other words the aspects against which environmental-related legislation can be evaluated). Therefore this study contains compiled guidelines that can be used to review environmentally related legislation. The selected South African legislation, which will be subjected to the Food and Agricultural Organizations' reviewing process, including the compiled guidelines for the reviewing of environmental-related legislation as contained in this study, includes: the National Environmental Management Act 107 of 1998; the Conservation of Agricultural Resources Act 43 of 1983 and the National Climate Change Response White Paper of 2011.