Cape Town - As the Cop21 UN climate conference, aimed at brokering a global deal to reduce carbon emissions, starts in Paris on Monday, South Africa’s Centre for Environmental Rights (CER) has noted “encouraging” improvements in accessing information so citizens can exercise their constitutional right to a healthy environment.
While government departments this year released data in just over half, or 51.9 percent, of the centre’s requests under the Promotion of Access to Information Act (Paia), this was significantly up from the 30.4 percent release rate in 2010.
Private sector bodies appear better capacitated to ensure Paia compliance: this year, two out of three Paia requests the centre submitted led to the release of information, up from 20 percent in 2010.
During the year, the Department of Water and Sanitation emerged at the top, with 71.4 percent of information requests granted – and delivered.
The Department of Environmental Affairs maintained its track record of granting, and releasing, information in half of the requests.
The worst remained the Department of Mineral Resources, which refused 62.5 percent of Paia requests during the year, and only delivered records in 12.5 percent of the approved requests.
In its “Signs of Hope?” report, the CER said the mineral resources track record was “disappointing” and “unacceptable”, considering the high levels of environmental degradation caused by mining.
The track record among municipalities varied “considerably”: some like Cape Town and Ekurhuleni were well-resourced to handle Paia requests, but others were “completely at a loss”. Still, municipalities released information in seven out of the nine Paia requests made since last year.
However, court proceedings are still under way over a Paia request for the atmospheric emission licences and compliance reports of two Durban South refineries, brought against the eThekwini municipality in April by the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance and the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance.
The metropolitan municipality refused to disclose the information, citing commercial and trade secrets, which if disclosed would cause commercial harm and prejudice.
The CER said it was a concern that government departments considered a wide range of information confidential or commercially sensitive, often without asking whether the release of information actually would harm the third party.
“In many instances, government departments simply accept the claim by third parties that information is commercially confidential without conducting an independent review of whether this claim is accurate,” the CER said.
“Moreover, we see departments take the view that they are obliged to refuse the (Paia) request if the third party objects to the release of records. This is an incorrect interpretation and application of Paia, which requires the holder of the record to make an independent assessment.”
Another concern was departmental record-keeping: a number of Paia requests had been refused on grounds the documents did not exist or could not be found. However, in one such case where a government department, not named in the report, claimed documents did not exist, the centre obtained the record from another sources.
“This evidences both poor record-keeping and even dereliction of duty, and raises the extremely concerning possibility that information officers are affirming that information does not exist either dishonestly, or without conducting the proper checks.”
Since 2010, the Centre for Environmental Rights has made 290 Paia requests: 237 to government departments and municipalities, 14 to parastatals and 39 to private bodies. In 2012, only 24.4 percent of government departments, 16.7 percent of parastatals and 26.7 percent of private bodies released information requested under Paia.
Last year, government departmental compliance increased to 55.3 percent, parastatals dropped to 25 percent and private bodies released information in 80 percent of Paia requests.
This year, the percentages were: government departments (51.9 percent) and private bodies 66.7 percent.
Political Bureau
* Use IOL’s Facebook and Twitter pages to comment on our stories. See links below.