Uilkraals Situation Assessment - Anchor Environmental

Development planning has been rather ad hoc in the past, but has now been formalised underthe Municipal Systems Act, which requires that all municipalities (i.e. Metros, DistrictMunicipalities and Local Municipalities) have to produce Integrated Development Plans (IDPs).As the IDP is a legislative requirement it has a legal status and supercedes all other plans thatguide development at local government level. The IDP process is one of the key tools for localgovernments to cope with their developmental roles and responsibilities. It is the principalstrategic planning instrument which guides and informs all planning, budgeting, managementand decision‐making in a municipality for a five‐year period. IDPs are also supposed to guidethe activities of other spheres of government, corporate service providers, NGOs and theprivate sector within the municipal area. Because of the participatory process it takesapproximately 6 – 9 months to complete an IDP. The IDP is updated every five years.Every municipality is required to produce an indicative plan, called a Spatial DevelopmentFramework (SDF), showing desired patterns of land use, directions of growth, urban edges,special development areas and conservation‐worthy areas. It must also produce a scheme,called a Land use Management System (LUMS)’ recording the land use and development rightsand restrictions applicable to each erf in the municipality. The plan should be flexible enoughto accommodate changing priorities, and the scheme has to conform to the plan. The plan(SDF) is a guide to development, and the scheme (LUMS) is binding.The National Environmental Management: Integrated Coastal Management Act No. 24 of2008 (ICMA), which came into force in December 2009, seeks to:• promote the conservation of the coastal environment, and maintain the naturalattributes of coastal landscapes and seascapes, and to ensure that developmentand the use of natural resources within the coastal zone is socially andeconomically justifiable and ecologically sustainable;• define rights and duties in relation to coastal areas;• determine the responsibilities of organs of state in relation to coastal areas;• prohibit incineration at sea;• control dumping at sea, pollution in the coastal zone, inappropriate developmentof the coastal environment and other adverse effects on the coastalenvironment; and• give effect to South Africa’s international obligations in relation to coastalmattersThe ICMA defines the coastal zone as:“The area comprising coastal public property, the coastal protection zone, coastal accessland and coastal protected areas, the seashore, coastal waters and the exclusive economiczone and includes any aspect of the environment on, in under and above such area”.All land below the high water mark, coastal waters and natural resources up to the boundaryof the exclusive economic zone are considered coastal public property (s.7) that is held in trustby the state on behalf of the citizens of the country (s.11) 1 . The state is required by ICMA totake “whatever reasonable legislative and other measures it considers necessary to conserveand protect coastal public property for the benefit of present and future generations” (s.12).1 Section 11, which deals with the ownership of coastal public property, is scheduled to come into force ata later date.Uilkraals Estuary Situation Assessment49Anchor Environmental