by Tinashe Madava
The pollution versus industrial development debate is on in southern Africa, as the region steps up economic growth amid calls to conserve the environment.
Southern Africa is faced with the options of fast industrialisation which may warrant “polluting now and cleaning up latter” as happened in most developed countries.
Some industrialists have observed that too stringent environmental controls may also cripple economic prosperity as the industry devotes more time for a clean environment without better lifestyles.
South Africa, Africa’s leading industrial country, has mining as its backbone of industrialisation but it is a major polluter, producing about 380 million tonnes of waste out of an industrial total of 460 million tonnes.
That is applying the concept of “pollute now and clean up latter11 evidently implemented by many
European countries. However, environmental concerns have become a global issue forcing some less developed countries to follow in theory and practice at the risk of not developing.
While pollution is either deliberate or accidental contamination of the environment with waste from human activities, especially industry, southern African countries will face enormous challenges of maintaining a clean environment.
Pollution indicators have been noticed from the basic end-point of all spills on systems – water and water bodies. Substances which harm the quality of air, water and soil, are also being noticed either in people, animals and plants (biogeochemical cycles).
Pollution is also being aggravated by growing populations and increased economic/industrial growth.
The Southern Centre for Energy and Environment recently recorded very high concentrations of pollutants in high density suburbs of Harare with the highest sulphur dioxide concentrations in
Highfield.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released a report warning of disastrous results unless immediate policy measures are implemented to counter increased emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, or sulphur dioxide mainly from industries.
The report reveals that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have grown by 30, 145, and 15 percent respectively due to fossil fuel use and land use changes, which are more evident in the developing countries.
“Not many countries are willing to take this report seriously. Oil producing nations, presuming that an acceptance of the climate change threat will mean a reduction in demand for oil, have decided to collectively oppose the report,” says Ravi Sharma in Down to Earth features.
While SADC countries are participating in efforts to reduce global warming, a Norwich (UK) Climate
Change Research Unit working in the southern Africa, observed that carbon emissions from the region remain very low. And the contribution of SADC to total global warming is less than two percent for all greenhouse gases, but that is not to say there is room for further pollution.
Scientists have also pointed out that it is quite clear that industrialisation in SADC may not harm the environment immediately from increased carbon dioxide emissions from plant growth.
But still unfavourable environments are affecting about 65 percent of the infants aged between zero and four years mainly due to air pollution in Zimbabwe every year, according to the Southern Centre for Energy and Environment.
A recent study by a team of environmental experts to determine the effects of industrial pollution indicates that people in high density areas are more exposed to acute respiratory infection as compared to those in low density but expensive areas, meaning that the poor suffer most as a result of pollution.
Such suffering, according to environmental writer, Jeremy Seabrook, might result in increased economic migrations “driven by poverty, hunger, environmental degradation, and developmental violence … ”
Most SADC countries have been battling to reduce water pollution levels which are reported to have trebled over the past five years due to increased industrial activity and sewage discharges.
Growth in population and urbanisation has also played a major role in uncontrollable waste discharges.
Population in the region is projected to rise from 136 million to nearly 300 million by 2025
(SARDC/IUCN/SADC 1994).
Angola’s untreated industrial waste from Luanda’s cement, battery oil and soap factories and a petroleum refinery, spill into the Cacuaco Bay. People living around the industrial park have no sewer pipes resulting in very high pollution levels.
Recent studies off the Maputo harbour in Mozambique indicate that the water is not safe for swimming. Maputo and Beira’s beaches are now dirty from increased erosion, human pollution and ship traffic. Researchers also found significant quantities of copper, iron, manganese and zinc in flour made from oven-dried fish caught in Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. This was attributed to the disposal of industrial waste in the lake.
A recent High-Level Round-Table ministerial meeting on Environment, Trade and Sustainable
Development held in Geneva concluded that “both trade liberalisation and environmental protection are necessary to advance sustainable development.
“However the environmental benefits of trade liberalisation are not automatic,“ the meeting concluded. “They can only be derived if appropriate environmental policies and sustainable development strategies are implemented.”
The prominence accorded to sustainable development during the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro seems to have heralded a new era for the environment versus progress debate. This has been witnessed by the holding of follow up conferences like the just ended World Solar Summit which sought to promote renewable energy in the home, schools, clinics and industries. (SARDC)
