The status quo of land rehabilitation in Southern Africa was the theme of nonprofit organisation the Land Rehabilitation Society of Southern Africa’s inaugural yearly conference, which was held in Pretoria last week.

In a keynote address, Department of Environmental Affairs (DoEA) chief policy adviser of strategic environmental intelligence Peter Lukey highlighted that, in terms of land transformation, the country would have no natural habitat left outside protected areas by 2050 at the current rate of conversion of natural vegetation in KwaZulu-Natal, the North West and Gauteng.

“If we keep on taking away and we keep on using up, it should be no surprise that the quality of our environment is ever decreasing. By doing this, we are losing biodiversity, the quality of our rivers is getting worse and the areas of natural infrastructure are being destroyed,” he emphasised.

Lukey suggested using environmental offsetting as a concept to give back to the environment what we had taken away.

Environmental offsetting is an intervention specifically implemented to counterbalance an adverse impact on the environment because of land-use change, resource use, discharge, emissions or other activities at one location by intervening at another location to deliver an environmental benefit.

Five types of environmental offsetting have been identified by the DoEA – carbon, biodiversity, air quality, water quality and heritage offsets.

Lukey believes that offsetting may provide an alternative solution to the long-standing environmental problems that the country has and continues to face, such as derelict, unrehabilitated mines.

He maintained that the challenge of successfully implementing environmental offsetting was in the accounting, specifically in terms of the setting of baselines, which would ensure that the offset provided a net environmental benefit and met the objectives that were set.

Lukey highlighted that the National Development Plan provided for environmental consideration by acknowledging the country’s environmental constraints, that people took more than what they gave back and that resources were consumed at a faster rate than what could be replenished.

The plan also recognises that the country needs to protect the natural environment in all respects, leaving subsequent genera- tions with “at least an endowment of at least equal value”. Lukey believes this statement is “a line in the sand”, as a way of moving away from merely just using the country’s natural resources.

The DoEA is starting to popularise the overall concept of environmental offsetting, with policies in place in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. It is also developing policy on biodiversity offsetting.

Work has also been initiated on developing a more detailed concept of air-quality offsetting and the DoEA has produced an independent discussion document on carbon offsetting and also released the mining and biodiversity guideline, besides others.

University of Pretoria extraordinary professor Martin Fey, University of Pretoria Department of Plant Production and Soil Science senior lecturer Dr Wayne Truter and landscape ecologist David Tongway also presented keynote addresses.