The Swapo Party Youth League (SPYL) wants the Cabinet to oversee environmental clearance decisions (ECCs), while critics warn this could politicise the process and undermine technical oversight.
SPYL secretary Ephraim Nekongo says environmental decisions should not be left solely to administrative officials and ministers must oversee decisions made within their ministries.
“We wish to urge the Cabinet to ensure that the granting of ECCs is not left solely at the mercy of administrative functionaries who bear no direct political responsibility towards the citizens for the preservation of Namibia’s natural resources,” Nekongo said on Friday.
Nekongo said article 40 of the Constitution gives Cabinet members the responsibility to direct, coordinate and supervise ministries and government departments.
“Article 41 states that ministers are individually accountable for the administration of their ministries and collectively responsible for the work of Cabinet to the president and parliament.”
SPYL’s call comes as it pushes for the ECC granted to the Sandpiper marine phosphate project to be reviewed and set aside.
The youth league has opposed phosphate mining since 2019.
Former Cabinet minister Helmut Angula, however, says processing ECC applications should remain an administrative function.
“That is not the duty of the Cabinet,” Angula told The Namibian yesterday.
He said the Cabinet develops policy, while administrators are responsible for implementing it in line with existing laws.
“It won’t work to push this to Cabinet level. No, that is administrative work and the policy is there, it has been formulated by the Cabinet and the laws are there, so it is the administrators who must carry out the processing, and then the minister will be briefed,” Angula said.
He said requiring the Cabinet to deal with individual applications would also place a large administrative burden on it.
“You can imagine how many applications there are on a monthly basis, and then the Cabinet will only be seized with the process of applications. That is not the duty of the Cabinet,” he said.
POLITICAL INFLUENCE
About two weeks ago, environmental commissioner Timoteus Mufeti granted an ECC to Namibian Marine Phosphate (NMP) for its Sandpiper project.
The project is led by businessman Knowledge Katti and his business partner, Mohammed Al Barwani, an Omani businessman.
The Namibian reported last week that the approval had left president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah and other senior government officials unhappy that they were not consulted before a decision involving major public interest was taken.
The Confederation of Namibian Fishing Associations has also questioned Mufeti over the decision, appointing lawyer Sisa Namandje to challenge it.
Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) parliamentary leader Imms Nashinge also rejected calls for the Cabinet to approve or reject ECCs.
“Demanding that the Cabinet sit in judgement to approve or reject ECCs is not just legally illiterate, it completely misses how statutory separation of powers and technical governance work,” Nashinge says.
He says giving the Cabinet control over ECCs could allow political interests to influence decisions involving Namibia’s natural resources.
“This is a desperate attempt to centralise power so that political elites can decide who gets a slice of Namibia’s natural resource cake,” Nashinge says.
He says environmental decisions should be based on scientific assessments.
“Handing scientific clearance decisions to the Cabinet won’t fix the administrative failure facing us, it will destroy environmental rule of law and replace scientific rigour with politicians’ appetites,” he adds.
CHANGE OF LAW
At present the Environmental Management Act of 2007 gives the environmental commissioner the responsibility to issue or decline ECCs.
“What needs to be done right now is have that office independent and not in the ministry and make sure it sticks to science and the aspirations of our Constitution and not to unpatriotic influences, as is the case right now,” Nashinge says.
Political analyst Sakaria Johannes also says Cabinet involvement in approving ECCs could weaken the legal process and politicise environmental decisions.
“SPYL rightly demands political accountability, but conflating executive policy oversight with statutory decision-making risks undermining the rule of law.
Replacing an objective technical assessment with political approval politicises regulatory compliance, weakens institutions, and blurs legal liability if environmental harm occurs,” he says.
Johannes says if the Cabinet were to directly approve projects such as Sandpiper, parliament would first have to change the law.
“Parliament must amend the law rather than allow the executive to usurp statutory administrative functions,” he says.
The debate over marine phosphate mining dates back more than a decade.
In 2019, then president Hage Geingob pushed the Cabinet to decide on the project despite a government report warning about possible risks to Namibia’s marine environment.
The project also faced opposition from the fishing industry, which took the government to court over a mining licence granted to NMP.
High Court judge Harald Geier previously found that NMP had not properly applied for an ECC and ruled that the company could not carry out marine phosphate mining until it obtained the certificate through the required process.
Last week, NMP said the new ECC does not mean mining will start immediately.
The Sandpiper project involves phosphate deposits in seabed sediments on the continental shelf at depths of between 180 and 250 metres.
The phosphate would be processed onshore, with the company planning to produce about three million tonnes of phosphate concentrate per year.
