The issuesurs of lost biodiversity within the iSimangaliso Wetland Park is about to boil over into mass a tion by some negatively charged folks, who's forefathers have fished lake St. Lucia and surrounding waterways since before the times of SHAKA ZULU.
This biodiversity loss has been caused, then exacerbated by the management style and related policies, procedures, actions and inactions of the iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority.
The IWPA (iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority) is the mandated Juristic person in terms of the World Heritage Convention act and associated legislations, which is appointed by the minister to manage the iSimangaliso Wetland Park World heritage site.
It is thus the duty of the IWPA to manage all the Environmental assets within the park, in the interests of the land owner as well as all of us as South African citizens , and ensure that the rights we had before the area was declared a world heritage site are not erroded or denied for any reason or by any actions taken by the IWPA.
The government has introduced many new laws, acts and legislations since the IWPA took office in December 1999
The one that we are concerned about is the Integrated Coastal Management Act, which mandates estuary management plans for all estuaries in South Africa at three distinct and seperate levels. National, provincial, and local.
So the question becomes who is responsible for the local government component of the St. Lucia estuary management plan ?
Because of the way that the iSimangaliso Wetland Park World Heritage site was declared as a DMZ or district Management Area, to ensure that local municipality influence was removed from the IWPA PLANNING mandates, it is our opinion that the IWPA should take excludive responsibility for the negative economic impacts caused by the current (December 2021) biodiversity problems within lake St. Lucia and surrounding esturine systems, including the Umfolozi flats and Sokhulu flood plains.
It is the IWPA duty and mandate to ensure that our rights to access natural renewable resources are protected and enshrined in the IWPA plans, policies and Procedures. The IWPA has failed miserably here, and needs to be taken to task by the minister. We will be pushing hard for this at the meeting on 1 December, where to buyhe disappearance of a local fisherman during a anti poaching opperation within the iSimangaliso Wetland Park along the northern sections of Eastern shores in mid November 2021 is the main item on the agenda.
Feed back will follow on December 2
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