Ambient air pollution on the Highveld : an airshed at a watershed moment?

Abstract

On 18 March 2022, the Pretoria High Court found that chronic air pollution is a violation of Section 24 of the South African Constitution, and that South Africans have a right to an environment that is not harmful to their health and well-being (CER, 2022). This “has important implications for communities forced to live with the debilitating effects of air pollution on the Mpumalanga Highveld, and more broadly for constitutional jurisprudence and government accountability” (CER, 2022). Since 2019, two environmental justice groups, groundWork and the Vukani Environmental Justice Movement, represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), sought recourse from the High Court on the high air pollution levels in the Highveld Priority Area (HPA). The basis of this “Deadly Air” Case was a declaration that “the poor air quality in the Highveld Priority Area is a breach of the residents’ right to an environment that is not harmful to their health and wellbeing” (CER, 2022). The HPA is known for its poor air quality. Numerous studies have reported widespread non-compliance with the PM and O3, as well as NOx and SO2 National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) (Steyn and Kornelius 2018; Feig et al., 2019; Chindhindi et al., 2019; Morosele and Langerman 2020). There are a range of air pollution sources which contribute to the poor air quality in the HPA, including industry, roads, vehicles, mining, power generation, biomass burning, wind-blown dust, domestic fuel use practices and waste burning, to name a few (Ross et al., 2007; Nkosi et al., 2018; Walton et al., 2021). The negative impacts of the air pollution are felt by many who reside on the Highveld and even beyond. Much pressure has been placed on government by civil society and legal experts to improve the air quality in the region, leading to many difficult discussions. Consequently, over the past years, the air quality in the airshed has become the focus of many air pollution-related research studies, legal debates and media releases.