The director of the environmental justice group Groundwork, Bobby Peek says air pollution poses the biggest and immediate risk to the health of South Africans and those responsible must account.
The High Court in Pretoria on Friday upheld a complaint by activists that poor air quality in the coal belt is a breach of constitutional rights.
The court gave the Environment Minister a year to enforce a clean air plan drawn up a decade ago.
South Africa’s coal belt in Mpumalanga is home to an estimated 3.6 million people, as well as a dozen Eskom coal-fired power stations and some Sasol petrochemical plants.
Peek says the milestone judgment is long overdue.
“It’s really an important judgment in South Africa’s history, about human rights, linking the environment to human rights. So now we understand environmental justice much more clearly. It’s about open democracy because industries now have to provide the information that we wanted for many years.
“It’s about accountability, industries must put in place and the government must put in place the systems that force the industry to have good monitoring. Certain industries must close and there has to be a plan for decommissioning and rehabilitation of Mpumalanga, there are many people dying from that pollution,” Peek explains.
