Politicised Time in Environmental Regulatory Procedure: The Struggles Against the Thabametsi Coal Plant in South Africa

IF 0.3 Q4 ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Global Environment Pub Date : 2024-02-26 DOI:10.3828/whpge.63837646622483

Yaowen Deng

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

This study revisits the enduring question of temporality in environmental politics, drawing on prognostic politics literature to identify temporality as the practice of making and enacting time claims within institutions at various scales. The research highlights the intersection of time, environmental governance and politicisation within the procedural aspects of environmental impact assessments (EIA) during infrastructure development. The case of South Africa’s Thabametsi coal plant (2014–2017) is examined to understand how disputes over the duration of the Thabametsi EIA shaped interpretations and responses to potential environmental impacts. This case highlights a distinct politicisation of time marked by the strategic deployment of scale. While developers and regulators leveraged national-level legislation to expedite the EIA for uninterrupted project development, environmental activists, influenced by post-apartheid legal norms, enforced a more comprehensive and slow-paced EIA. By scaling down their legal arguments and focusing on project-specific regulations, the activists managed to induce significant delays in the coal plant’s realisation.

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环境监管程序中的政治化时间：反对南非 Thabametsi 煤炭厂的斗争

本研究重新审视了环境政治中持久存在的时间性问题，借鉴预言政治文献，将时间性确定为在各种规模的机构中提出和实施时间要求的实践。研究强调了时间、环境治理和政治化在基础设施开发过程中环境影响评估（EIA）程序方面的交集。通过对南非 Thabametsi 煤炭厂（2014-2017 年）的案例进行研究，了解有关 Thabametsi 环评持续时间的争议如何影响对潜在环境影响的解释和应对。该案例凸显了以规模战略部署为标志的时间政治化。开发商和监管机构利用国家级立法加快环评进度，以保证项目开发不中断，而环保活动家则受到种族隔离后法律规范的影响，强制要求环评更加全面、缓慢。通过缩小法律论据的范围并将重点放在针对具体项目的法规上，激进分子成功地使煤炭工厂的建成时间大大推迟。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Global Environment ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES-

CiteScore

0.50

自引率

25.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： The half-yearly journal Global Environment: A Journal of History and Natural and Social Sciences acts as a forum and echo chamber for ongoing studies on the environment and world history, with special focus on modern and contemporary topics. Our intent is to gather and stimulate scholarship that, despite a diversity of approaches and themes, shares an environmental perspective on world history in its various facets, including economic development, social relations, production government, and international relations. One of the journal’s main commitments is to bring together different areas of expertise in both the natural and the social sciences to facilitate a common language and a common perspective in the study of history. This commitment is fulfilled by way of peer-reviewed research articles and also by interviews and other special features. Global Environment strives to transcend the western-centric and ‘developist’ bias that has dominated international environmental historiography so far and to favour the emergence of spatially and culturally diversified points of view. It seeks to replace the notion of ‘hierarchy’ with those of ‘relationship’ and ‘exchange’ – between continents, states, regions, cities, central zones and peripheral areas – in studying the construction or destruction of environments and ecosystems.