Environmental evaluation procedure for coastal developments in South Africa

The South African coastline represents an area of intense development pressure. Rapid population growth as well as changing political and socio-economic conditions have resulted in increased demands on coastal land, especially for the development of holiday housing and recreation resorts. Until recently, developers and authorities have encouraged and satisfied these demands without rigorous environmental or developmental constraints. Inevitably, this haphazard and unrestrained approach has led to degradation of coastal resources. The root cause of this is the lack of a formal, structured approach for evaluating the environmental implications of development applications. In response to these problems, a systematic procedure for evaluating the environmental suitability and social desirability of development proposals in coastal areas has been developed. The main features of this procedure are outlined in this paper.