Evaluation of public participation process in environmental impact assessments of selected development projects in the Vhembe District of South Africa

Abstract

Ensuring a pragmatic balance between environmental imperatives and community development within Vhembe district in South Africa has been a growing concern since communities’ right to an environment that sustains their wellbeing is being infringed due to ecologically unsustainable development activities carried out in the area. In the wake of this, this research study evaluated the extent to which Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) of development projects in Vhembe district complied with public participation as stipulated by EIA policy guidelines and goals provided within EIA legislation in South Africa. The objectives of the study were: to evaluate the level of awareness of guidelines for public participation by the community; to assess the extent to which Environmental Assessment Practitioners (EAPs) have complied with guidelines for public participation in EIA legislations; and to assess public participation practice by EAPs in relation to community expectations in Vhembe district. This study relied mainly on qualitative method of data collection and analysis supplemented by quantitative method. In order to achieve the main aim of this research, a case study was used. Simple random sampling method was done on development projects that required EIA due to their potential to cause irreversible harm to the Earth’s systems thus undermine sustainable development. These development projects were sampled from the four local municipalities within Vhembe district. Systematic sampling was used to identify respondents to whom questionnaires were administered. Interviews were conducted with twelve key informants and also with four EAPs who conducted EIAs for the sampled development projects. The reviewed documents for the development projects included Basic Assessment Reports (BARs); and Scoping and Environmental Impact Report (S&EIR). For data analysis, Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used. The results revealed that community members are generally not conversant with EIA guidelines for public participation. Furthermore, it was revealed that EAPs only complied with some of the minimum requirements of EIA procedure. Also notable is that EAPs displayed lack of requisite expertise on how to conduct public participation and as a result infringed on the public’s right to access information by making projects’ information only available in libraries and websites. Key recommendation is that public participation should be made effective and participative by ensuring that community members are capacitated accordingly. As a key contribution to the body of knowledge, this study developed a context-based adaptive strategic framework for ensuring effective and participative public participation practice based on local realities thus to ensure sustainable development.