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The Politics of Ecology: Dredge-mining* in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Robert A. Preston-Whyte
Robert A. Preston-Whyte
Affiliation:
Department of Geographical and Environmental Sciences, University of Natal, PO Box 18091, Dalbridge 4014, South Africa.
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Extract

The objective of interest-groups is to influence policy. Conflict is inevitable when two or more interest-groups are in competition for scarce resources. It then becomes the responsibility of the state to accommodate or resolve the conflict. However, an additional complexity occurs if the state agencies are themselves undergoing transformation, as has recently occurred in South Africa.

These issues are explored, using as a case-study the conflict that occurred between environmental interestgroups and a mining company over an application to dredge-mine the sand dunes that line the eastern shores of Lake St Lucia in Natal. The nature and objectives of these groups is discussed, and the role of the press in the controversy is analysed. The interests of black settlers who wish to return to their ancestral lands following the collapse of apartheid are shown to complicate further the dilemma that confronts state policymakers. The changing nature of the ‘decision environment’ in South Africa is addressed, and group theory is used to explain the relationship between state agencies and the mining, environmental, and black settler group, interests. Stages in the policy environment to match the modes of change over the period of political transformation in South Africa are identified by levels of conflict and ambiguity in a contingency model.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , Summer 1995 , pp. 151 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1995

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