Southern Africa Environment Project

Environmental and Sustainable Development Advocacy

Coega Harbour and Industrial Development Zone (IDZ)
Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape Province (1997-   )

Legal, socio-economic, and ecological research and analysis of the Coega Harbour and IDZ Project in the Eastern Cape -- and participation in the public participation process for the project -- has been a major activity of SAEP for five years.  Some of the major research projects done on the project are listed below.

Banerjee, Subho,  What is the true air pollution price of the proposed Coega IDZ and harbour project? (November 1998)

Lequesne, Tom,  A Greater Addo National Park: Issues, Costs, Policies (December 1997)

Lequesne, Tom,  Coega Harbour and IDZ Project: Issues Raised (December 1997)

Seepersad, Clyde,  The Coega Dream: What Does a Social Cost-Benefit Analysis Say?" (December 1998)

James Clarke, South Africa's most distinguished environmental journalist: 

"The government's go-ahead for the highly controversial Coega Industrial Development Zone and the Port of Ngqura Project in the Eastern Cape -- 30 km up the coast from Port Elizabeth -- questions its sincerity regarding the coastal environment...what inflamed the environmentally caring section of the public most was that the government decided to go ahead with the scheme before doing a proper environmental impact study. It was taken to task and perhaps learned a lesson tghat the government's regulations -- assuming the government is sincere in drawing them up -- must apply to the government itself." 

"And what of the government as a developer?  Why should it be exempt from the laws it has designed on our behalf to protect our interests?  For example, despite great opposition the government was making decisions regarding a multi-billion-rand harbour at Coega even before the environmental impact assessment had been completed.  That is hardly in keeping with the spirit of the law." Or, we would add, the letter of the law! 

-- from Coming Back to Earth: South Africa's Changing Environment (Jacana 2002)(pp. 191 and 357)

Professor Bond devotes one third of his major new book, Unsustainable South Africa: Environment, Development, and Social Protest to a devastating social and economic critique of the Coega Project.