LETTER: Poor pollution enforcement not the full story

Your editorial opinion refers (“Poor enforcement has allowed air pollution to get worse”, September 10). It was surprising to see no mention of Sasol, Africa’s second-biggest emitter of toxic air pollution, nor of the company’s 20 years of lobbying against air pollution standards.

Poor enforcement is only a small part of the story. Thanks to the outsize influence of polluters such as Eskom, Sasol and ArcelorMittal, the incontrovertible health effects of industrial emissions are invariably subordinated to claims that fossil fuels are essential for economic development, jobs and energy security.

As their name makes clear, SA’s industrial air pollution limits — the minimum emission standards (MES) — were intended to be the bare minimum with which industry was to comply by April 1 2025 at the latest (should postponement applications succeed). The MES are supposed to protect human health, but concerted corporate lobbying left them hopelessly weak — weaker than even those in China and India.

Despite this, industrial polluters continue to receive leniency and exemptions from compliance, most often by claiming there will be dire economic consequences should they be required to comply with the law. There is usually very little interrogation of these claims.

For instance, in her recent decision to grant Sasol’s appeal for “alternative” sulphur dioxide limits for its 17 coal-fired boilers at its Secunda operations, former environment minister Barbara Creecy referred to the need to “balance” socioeconomic, ecological and health effects, saying that SA is “plagued by high unemployment and poverty rates” and that “it is not in dispute that [Sasol] provides strategic contributions to the economy”.

She did not explain why requiring Sasol’s compliance with already weak air pollution standards, of which it has had more than 14 years’ notice — and which it had previously indicated were achievable — would affect its ability to “[support] the local economy”. Sasol was granted weaker limits until March 31 2030, and its latest reporting suite indicates that it may well seek additional leniency thereafter.

In fact, the provision on which Sasol relied for its most recent application (12A of the List of Activities) was itself undoubtedly inserted as a result of last-minute corporate lobbying. In 2018 the List of Activities was amended, after public comment, to limit MES postponements to March 31 2025. However, at the same time 12A was inserted into the law, despite never having been the subject of legally required public participation.

The environment minister interprets 12A to allow polluters to continue to seek “alternative” emission limits beyond March 2025, with no deadline for legal compliance. The minister has now also decided to allow outright exemptions from the MES. This retrogressive approach violates constitutional rights.

So while poor enforcement of air quality legislation is a problem, corporate lobbying campaigns to weaken and delay these laws is the primary cause of SA’s high levels of air pollution.

Robyn Hugo
Director of climate change engagement, Just Share

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.