Business Maverick: Interview: Environment minister Barbara Creecy surprised at her mining role

Barbara Creecy, who became environment minister in May, expected that in the mining space she might spend a lot of her time dealing with conservationists opposed to the issuing of mining permits. She was in for a surprise.on the sidelines of the 10th annual Oppenheimer Research Conference in Midrand, which is focused on conservation.

There are also appeals of course from groups opposed to mining on various grounds. These include communities, heritage authorities and conservationists. But the mix of appeals was much wider than she anticipated.If everyone’s unhappy, the system’s working,” she said with a laugh. It certainly does suggest that the oversight mechanisms appear to be working, through Creecy did not disclose any details about specific cases.

She admitted that in the case of a developing economy such as South Africa’s, the transition to a low-carbon economy is not going to take place as fast as many environmentalists would like.It’s very important that we understand that mining contributes 7.5% to our GDP and 30% to our foreign exchange earnings and we have a balance of payments deficit.

On the wildlife front, Creecy said it was vital for the African nations that are the custodians of the world’s last great megafauna populations, to derive benefit from that wildlife. At the recent triennial CITES conference on the global trade in endangered species, a proposal led by Botswana and Zimbabwe to loosen the ban on the ivory trade was shot down. This led Zimbabwe to say it was considering withdrawing from CITES altogether.

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