By Sipho Masondo

Environmental impact assessments are "powerful sticks" and should be used to prevent unscrupulous developers from destroying the country's wetlands, said Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa.

Molewa said she was determined to demolish, or stop the construction of, illegal buildings on wetlands and other environmentally sensitive areas.

"[Environmental impact assessments] are a very powerful tool we are using. No development should go on without an assessment. We can't abandon [assessments]. We can't say 'Let's build, build and build'," she said.

The construction of buildings for the Pan African Parliament, in Midrand, north of Johannesburg, was not the only development the government had halted as a result of environmental concerns, Molewa said.

"As we speak . we are re-doing an [assessment] for a dam as a result of environmentally unfriendly issues."

In a country like South Africa, in which water is scarce, there was a pressing need to protect wetlands as an important source of water.

"They provide space for most important plants . which bring an important balance to the ecosystem," she said.

Climate change was a result of the degradation of the environment and wetlands that have been destroyed could have played a role in lessening the effect of recent countrywide floods that caused R2.3-billion in damage.

Heather Malan of the University of Cape Town's zoology department, said the Department of Environmental Affairs had good legislation in place but was failing to protect wetlands because the laws were difficult to enforce.

"Many wetlands are being degraded faster than we can protect them. They are degraded by urban development, pollutants and agriculture," she said.

"Wetlands act as sponges in times of storms - they store the water."

They also clean underground water, she said. Their loss meant water quality declined and water management was made more difficult.

"Often the problem is that the benefits of a wetland are not to the landowner but to the people downstream. So there is no incentive to keep them," she said.

City of Johannesburg spokesman Gabu Tugwana said the council's Environmental Management Department would scrutinise development proposals and "will not support [those] on sensitive sites".

Source: The Times