Nedbank wades into the fray

Acid mine drainage a ‘binding constraint’ on economy

SUE BLAINE

Published: 2011/02/15 08:03:02 AM

ACID mine drainage and "infrastructure issues" were "binding constraints" on SA’s economic growth and its ability to create jobs and improve social welfare, Nedbank ’s chief economist, Dennis Dykes, said yesterday.


The government has pledged, in its New Growth Path, to create 5 - million jobs by 2020 to reduce SA’s 25% unemployment rate.


SA needed practical solutions to calm the "severe headwinds" of water quality, quantity and accessibility, Mr Dykes said during a panel discussion at SA’s inaugural Water and Energy Forum yesterday.


The government’s policies, including the Industrial Policy Action Plan and the New Growth Path, did not pay enough attention to developing new, less energy-intensive industries from which SA could benefit, he told Business Day after the discussion.


These policies made only fleeting mention of these industries, the most obvious example being the world’s growing "green economy", focusing instead on "what SA has done well in the past", he said. "We need to look at our energy-intensive (industries) with a bit of a jaundiced eye. We need to … take account of the realities of the next couple of decades (and) … create new industries that are not energy-intensive."


SA is ranked among the world’s top 20 carbon dioxide ) emitters and has an economy built on fossil fuel- based electricity generation.


University of KwaZulu-Natal hydrology professor Roland Schultze said SA was largely a semidesert with an average annual rainfall of less than half the global annual average. SA already had a high-risk climate and water was the primary medium through which climate change affected communities, he said.


had surpassed scenario planners’ worst case scenario, he said.


Acid mine drainage was a "key ingredient" of the water problems facing SA and for decades mining houses and the government had "passed the parcel" regarding responsibility for cleaning up the damage done, and preventing further damage, Business Leadership SA’s CEO, Michael Spicer , said.


The Gauteng agriculture and rural development department’s acting director for air quality, Rina Taviv, said in 1997 the province had 470-million tons of mining waste and 15-million tons of general waste and the situation was "getting worse".




blaines@bdfm.co.za