Browsing by Author "Rumble, Olivia"

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    Multi-jurisdictional analysis of integration of climate change considerations in regulations and guidelines across 16 environmental impact assessment (EIA) regimes
    (2022) Mayembe, Rose; Norton, Marieke; Simpson, Nicholas P; Rumble, Olivia
    The contribution of the human activities to climate change is well understood. Yet integration of climate change considerations in tools designed to govern activities affecting the environment, such as Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), remains underdeveloped and inconsistently applied. There is no clear direction on what measure of consideration is sufficient for environmental decision-making on potential impacts on the climate for proposed policies, programs, plans and projects. This research reviews progress across a range of 16 EIA regimes and outlines the potential for integration of climate change considerations in EIA. The research used a desk review of EIA literature to identify and assess regulations and guidelines that have been established to promote the integration of climate change in EIA. A typology of levels of integration was developed to guide analysis across multiple EIA regimes. The findings identify a global and growing normative expectation for climate change considerations to be integrated into EIA and describe the range of ways this is done across the regimes selected. Climate change integration in EIA is typically concerned with climate change mitigation, specifically greenhouse gas emissions from proposed developments. Fewer regimes are concerned with climate change adaptation, and in general, an integration deficit is identified for regimes where climate change is partially considered. Several challenges to integrating climate change in EIA are identified, including lack of practice guidelines and regulatory frameworks. Reflecting on the variety of approaches, the discussion extends typologies of integration in EIA to examine and provide a better understanding of substantive consideration of climate change in EIA. Examples of high integration indicate that EIA holds potential to play a substantive role in environmental governance at project level decision making affecting climate change. However, the range of examples also cautions that many domestic obstacles can militate against integration including political, socio-technical, and economic imperatives – particularly those affecting sectoral and scope exclusions. Nevertheless, developments across some regimes indicate leverage points for greater integration, including the role of EIA review to establish new precedents for the relevance of climate change to EIA. Potential future research and practice directions are identified, including development of regulations and practice guidelines, inclusion of climate change adaptation aspects, strengthening postdecision monitoring, application to all relevant sectors and activities, alignment with SEA, and integration across all stages of the EIA process.
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    Regulating contaminated land in order to identify, manage and cause the rehabilitation of contaminated land: a review of the legislative adequacy of South Africa's contaminated land regime
    (2020) Muller, Heinrich; Rumble, Olivia
    Land contamination remains a chronic threat to environmental integrity and human health, warranting scrutiny on the effectiveness of the domestic legal regime. South Africa has still to understand the full extent to which it will undermine the country's sustainable development goals and well-being of its population. Contaminated land impacts not only the environment, but it causes socio-economic impacts. In 2009, the National Environmental Management: Waste Act, 2008 (Act No. 59 of 2008) was enacted with a dedicated contaminated land regime (Part 8 of that Act). Given the importance of regulating contaminated land, a valuable analysis would be to determine whether Part 8 is legislatively adequately to enable the identification, management and rehabilitation of contaminated land. There is, however, a serious lack of information about the extent of land contamination in South Africa. This is evident from its the government's official reporting. There is also little information about the enforcement of the contaminated land regime itself and it is therefore difficult to measure its success. International studies have identified certain legislative best-practice elements for contaminated land regimes. These elements present a good yardstick against which to measure Part 8 of the Waste Act for purposes of determining whether it will enable the identification, management and rehabilitation of contaminated land. This study finds that while Part 8 contains some of the legislative best practices, it mostly falls short and various reforms are recommended.