When the Namibian government starts opposing its own environmental decisions, it should be a warning that something is seriously wrong with the person responsible for protecting Namibia’s environment.
That is precisely what is happening with marine phosphate mining currently after environmental commissioner Timoteus Mufeti granted an environmental clearance certificate allowing the controversial project to proceed – a decision the fisheries minister has now formally appealed.
The spectacle of the government fighting itself would be almost comical if the stakes were not so high.
Namibia’s fishing industry has long warned of the potentially devastating consequences of marine phosphate mining. It is one of the country’s oldest and most sustainable industries, supporting thousands of livelihoods.
Earlier this year, the High Court found that Mufeti failed to apply his mind when granting environmental clearance for mining in the Erindi Private Game Reserve between Okahandja and Omaruru.
The court noted Mufeti’s own admission that Erindi is a nature and game reserve “of material conservation importance” and is home to both black and white rhino.
Mufeti conceded that he failed to consider the presence of these endangered species when issuing the clearance.
The court went further, stating: “One gets the distinct impression that, despite the concession, Mr Mufeti attempted to justify this faux pas committed by his office, and the propriety of such conduct must be questioned. What is astounding is that despite these concessions, [Mufeti] continued to oppose the application until two days before the hearing.”
In another matter currently before the High Court involving the Doro !Nawas and Uibasen Twyfelfontein conservancies, Mufeti conceded under oath that he has no written record supporting his decision to grant environmental clearances for tin mining in a core communal conservancy area also recognised as an important black rhino habitat.
Can the official entrusted with protecting Namibia’s environment not produce written records showing how a major decision affecting a core black rhino area was reached?
Similar concerns have arisen in the ||Huab Conservancy, where granting environmental clearance facilitated copper mining in an area home to an important black rhino habitat and one that has historically generated sustainable conservation and tourism benefits for the conservancy.
Now their livelihoods are at risk.
These cases raise a fundamental question: At what point do repeated ‘mistakes’ become a systemic problem?
Mufeti occupies one of the most consequential environmental decision-making positions in Namibia. His decisions can determine whether mining companies enter sensitive wildlife areas and whether habitats survive or disappear.
Environmental clearance is supposed to be the safeguard that ensures potentially irreversible impacts are properly considered before damage occurs.
Instead, communities, conservancies, conservation organisations and industries are increasingly being forced to spend years and millions of dollars challenging environmental decisions in court – often after the damage has already begun.
Litigation is not an adequate environmental protection mechanism. A court victory years later cannot restore a destroyed wildlife habitat, recover lost economic opportunities, or undo damage to an ecosystem.
So the question now has to be asked: Why is Mufeti continuing to get away with it?
Who holds the environmental commissioner accountable even when courts find he has failed to apply his mind? What else does he get away with in most cases – those in which the aggrieved parties cannot afford lawyers?
Who takes responsibility when those decisions threaten wildlife, sustainable tourism, fishing and the livelihoods of thousands of Namibians?
The phosphate mining dispute should be a wake-up call. When one government ministry has to appeal an environmental clearance issued by another, something is clearly broken.
Namibia cannot afford a governance system where decisions with irreversible consequences can be made by one official who does shoddy work and then simply claims ‘human error’ when challenged.
The Constitution places an obligation on the state to promote the maintenance of ecosystems, biological diversity and the sustainable use of natural resources.
It is time the government stopped asking the courts to clean up environmental decision-making failures and start asking why those failures keep happening in the first place.
And it is beyond time that someone held the environmental commissioner accountable.
