Capricorn committed to protecting its environment

The District Municipality of Capricorn (South Africa) has adopted an environmental management policy that is now a corporate-wide policy.

The policy clearly states that the effective management of the District’s greatest asset, the environment, is a clear responsibility of the local government. The District Municipality, covering an area of 185,222 hectares, has many residents that depend on the natural environment for their livelihood. Concern about the degradation of the city’s biodiversity was one of the reasons the environmental management policy was developed.

Some of the principles include the commitment to:

• adopt and implement principles and underlying approaches to sustainable development;
• protect the District’s biodiversity;
• responsible stewardship of the resources within the District Municipality through open, consultative, integrated and transparent governance; and to
• consider full environmental costs.

The environmental management policy concludes with a leadership pledge that all Councillors and senior management are required to sign.

Because local government is tasked with service provision and ensuring that social and economic development needs within the carrying capacity of the biological resource base, local government is an important manager of global biodiversity. ICLEI has established the Local Action for Biodiversity (LAB) project to explore the best ways for local governments to engage in effective biodiversity protection, utilization and management. For more information on LAB, please visit www.iclei.org/biodiversity.

Capricorn is one of 38 local governments in Africa that are currently Members of ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. For more information on ICLEI and its operations in Africa in particular, please visit www.iclei.org/africa.

Source: Capricorn District Municipality Environmental Management Policy.