Keynote Address by Ms Rejoice
Mabudafhasi Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs
and Tourism, 5 April 2006 Vanderbijlpark, South
Africa
The Mayor of Sedibeng, Mittal
Steel CEO, Mr Chugh, honoured guests, ladies and
gentlemen. Thank you very much for this invitation
to the opening of the Mittal Steel Water Treatment
Plant.
I am genuinely pleased to celebrate
this occasion with you. I want to emphasize this
point, for we live in a world where glamour grabs
the headlines; where goal-scorers are fêted
above goal-makers; where the foundation stones
of our achievements are often ignored.
We are here to celebrate a commitment
to ensuring water quality, and to the conservation
of water. I cannot help but contrast this with
what the celebrations might have been, had we
rather been building a new dam. We are dealing
here with issues of “wise use”, of care in the
stewardship of the most fundamental of resources.
Somehow, there are those who do not see this as
particularly worth celebrating, or reporting upon.
But should we rather have gone
the way of the past – of abusing this resource,
rather than using it wisely, and then simply seeking
an additional water resource – then these same
people would have been quick to marvel at the
new dam.
This is not to be anti-dam building.
Dams are necessary in a country with our climate.
But we need to be extremely cautious before building
dams, for they come at a massive price. If we
take more care with the water we have already
dammed, we can use the money that would otherwise
be spent on a new dam for better uses. And we
shall avoid the additional environmental impacts
that come with dams.
I think that most South Africans
are becoming very aware of the need for water
conservation. We still have a long way to go before
we can say that we are using our water with suitable
wisdom. But the trends are positive indeed.
One of the most fundamental
questions we need to ask when we look at how we
deal with resources, is “Who benefits, and who
pays?” Ours has been a country in which the norm
has been for the “haves” to benefit, and the “have-nots”
to pay, in so much of the allocation of resources.
Prior to our National Water
Act, when water was being wasted, and one built
a new dam to meet demand, it was an effective
subsidy for those who were wasting water. Rather
than making them pay the right price for water,
and abide by guidelines that conserve water, the
building of a dam simply allowed the general user
to pay the costs (and often with a further subsidy
from the general taxpayer). Economists call this,
“perverse subsidies”. We encouraged people to
do the very thing we needed to stop.
The National Water Act has been
a very far-reaching, democratic and fundamentally
fair piece of legislation. We have moved to a
“user-pays” approach, especially with the emphasis
on escalating block-rate tariffs – the more you
use, the more you pay per unit. This means that
those who drive the marginal cost of water, pay
the marginal price. It is as it should be.
Within that we have recognized
the social justice of the concept of “free basic
water”. This was not won without a fight, but
again can be shown to be in the long-term interests
of both the management of water, and in the development
of our still very inequitable society.
Mittal Steel’s achievement of
a 30% reduction in water consumption from the
Vaal Dam and Vaal River must thus be celebrated
for being a role-model for accountability. It
is massively important for all water-users to
interrogate the amount of water they are using,
and to ensure that they as optimally efficient
in this use.
As important as the water conservation
efforts of Mittal Steel are, it is not the only
concern. Most of us are all familiar with the
famous line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem,
The Ancient Mariner: “Water, water, every where,
nor any drop to drink”. He was referring to the
salt water of the sea, of course.
Like so many countries in the
world, we face increasing threats to our quality
of water. One may as well not have water, as to
have water that one cannot use.
What I appreciate about Mittal
Steel’s commitment is that it is an acknowledgement
of the “polluter pays” principle. It was not that
long ago, in Germany, that the then novel idea
was applied that an industry’s water intake-pipe
should be downstream of its effluent discharge-pipe.
How very sensible.
Our water systems must be allowed
to assimilate the many pollutants that feed into
our rivers, wetlands and groundwater systems.
By having a zero effluent discharge facility,
Mittal Steel is playing its part in protecting
the aquatic biological diversity that is so often
the victim of selfish neglect.
This is enshrined in our National
Water Act, where the so-called “Water Reserve”
focuses on ensuring that water for the natural
functioning of ecological systems, and water for
basic human needs, are given priority. Notwithstanding
the absolutely astonishing achievements of the
Department of Water Affairs and Forestry in providing
water to all those denied it in the past, many
of our people still depend on rivers and streams
for their basic water needs. Increasingly there
are question marks about the fitness of such water
for human consumption. It is the kind of practices
being internalized by Mittal Steel that can turn
this around.
I would like to add that ours
is a Government committed to co-operative governance,
and the forging of collaborative approaches by
my Department and our sibling Departments is borne
out in the attempts to ensure a dovetailing of
requirements stemming from acts such as the National
Water Act and our National Environmental Management
Act. Water resource management is fundamental
to environmental management, for water is the
“life-blood” of carbon-based life.
Let me end with a challenge.
Many of our wetlands have been destroyed over
the years, through the kind of neglect and myopic
emphasis on profit and production that Mittal
Steel now confronts. There is much that needs
to be done to rehabilitate degraded wetlands,
as is being championed by a programme close to
my heart, the Working for Wetlands programme.
We need companies like Mittal Steel to support
these or other such initiatives. I genuinely salute
your commitment to being environmentally healthy.
But being healthy when many around you are ill,
leaves you vulnerable.
Mr Chugh, the CEO of Mittal
Steel, wrote to me to say that the R222 million
spent on the Main Water Treatment Plant that we
are here to celebrate is, and I quote, “part of
the R1 billion environmental expenditure programme
to ensure that Mittal Steel South Africa meets
the highest possible environmental standards”.
I salute Mittal Steel for this.
I know that good business people are increasingly
looking at the “triple bottom line” and ensuring
that they meet social and environmental standards.
It makes good business sense for a company like
Mittal Steel. I want to believe that this is more
than just good business sense, though. I want
to believe that this is a long-term commitment
to our country and region. And that is why I am
honoured to be with you today.
