Abstract
South African democracy witnessed considerable effort to redefine Environmental
Impact Assessment regulations to improve participation of citizen’s towards
sustainable development of activities. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of participatory
processes has generally been mixed and in many cases fallen below expectations, with
lack of empirical evidence especially in South Africa to understand the underlying
elements that may contribute to poor public participation in Environmental Impact
Assessments. This paper attempts to investigate the participatory inefficiencies of
Environmental Impact Assessments for mining development specifically in
Dullstroom, Mpumalanga and presents viewpoints from key stakeholders. Results
indicate that Environmental Impact Assessments especially for mining development
are conducted as tokenistic tools to approve developments rather than to genuinely
engage with the concerns of interested and affected groups. There is a need for
environmental practitioners to be impartial during assessments, including for the
independence of government as regulator and enforcer of environmental assessment
processes rather than spearheading mining development for economic development.
The paper makes recommendations to improve participation of citizen’s during
environmental impact assessment processes.