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Rob Munro
Posts:27
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| 05/12/2007 9:22 AM |
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URGENT ATTENTION:
Dear Sir/Madam
LANGEBAAN DEVELOPMENT: Your article Argus Wednesday APRIL 18 2007 and related subsequent correspondence in your pages refer
The Baja Sardinia development proposals currently being advanced for Shark Bay, a sensitive part of the south eastern shoreline of Langebaan lagoon and encroaching upon the conservation buffer zone separating the town and the West Coast National Park highlight a particularly important issue. Whilst Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA’s) are required in terms for example of the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA) for proposed developments such as this one with potentially damaging environmental implications, it is how these assessments are ultimately adjudicated that provides particular cause for concern. To the extent that they represent a piecemeal project-by-project approach that most often fails to adjudicate individual proposals within the context of the cumulative effects of serial development such instruments as EIA’s, though well intentioned, in themselves are of limited value.
Nowhere is the cumulative impact of piecemeal development more evident than in Langebaan lagoon and its environs. Significant erosion of beaches along the north eastern shores of the lagoon is currently being addressed symptomatically, and critical erosion in the general area of the Alabama Slipway currently threatens municipal sewerage infrastructure and needs extremely urgent attention if only to avoid sewage pollution of the lagoon. This erosion and other impacts have become particularly evident over the past decade as a result of accelerated and largely undirected piecemeal development along the shoreline and generally within the biosphere of the lagoon, a site of international conservation significance enjoying recognition in terms of the Ramsar Convention. With nearly half the serviced sites in the town vacant this development has extended to the benefit largely of absentee property speculators at great cost in terms of the negative impact on the Lagoon and its environs. The burden of objection to the current Baja Sardinia development proposals are that they represent yet another event in the domino effect that will ultimately and by stealth erode the unique value of Langebaan lagoon in contravention not least of South Africa’s obligations of custodianship in terms amongst others of the Ramsar Convention. It is high time that the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism and other competent authorities, including the Province put their money where their mouths are and discharge their obligations in terms of Chapters 5 and 6 of NEMA - in particular that they as a matter of urgency produce the required comprehensive environmental management plan for Greater Langebaan as a basis for adjudicating and directing any further development in this critically sensitive and as yet unique area.
Johan Ackron
http://savesharkbay.org
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