President Jacob Zuma in Parliament. Credit: AFP
Government will implement ocean economy projects which are expected to contribute more than R20 billion to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2019.
“Going forward, delivery units have been established in the lead departments to drive the implementation of the detailed delivery plans. We will achieve the growth and the jobs we need in the economy,” President Jacob Zuma said.
He said progress on the ocean economy initiatives would be monitored on a weekly basis by the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation.
President Zuma was speaking in Durban during the open day of Operation Phakisa, which promotes economic growth and job creation in line with the goals outlined in the National Development Plan.
The open day was an opportunity for the President to release the results of weeks of exploratory work of unlocking the country’s ocean economy.
Operation Phakisa has four priority areas, which include marine transport and manufacturing, offshore oil and gas exploration, aquaculture as well as marine protection services and ocean governance.
The operation is an adaptation of the Big Fast Results methodology that was successfully applied by the Malaysian Government in the delivery of its Economic and Government Transformation Programmes.
President Zuma said the oceans have the potential to contribute up to R177 billion to the GDP and create just over one million jobs by 2033.
30 exploration wells to drill for offshore oil and gas
The work stream on offshore oil and gas exploration has set a target of drilling 30 exploration wells in the next 10 years.
“Over the next 20 years, this work could lead to the production of 370 000 barrels of oil and gas per day. The result would be 130 000 jobs and a contribution of US $2.2 billion to GDP,” said President Zuma.
South Africa’s coast and adjoining waters have possible resources of approximately nine billion barrels of oil.
The aquaculture work stream underlined the high growth potential of South Africa’s aquaculture sector due to an increasing demand for fish.
Aquaculture work stream identifies 8 initiatives
Eight initiatives that could spur growth in the sector have been identified.
One of the initiatives includes implementing 24 projects across South Africa, which are expected to grow the aquaculture sector’s revenue from about R500 million today, to almost R1.4 billion in 2019.
President Zuma said the marine protection services and ocean governance work stream has undertaken the task of developing an overarching, integrated ocean governance framework for the sustainable growth of the ocean economy.
Protect and promote benefits of ocean environment
“The plan entails the protection of the ocean environment from all illegal activities and to promote its multiple socio-economic benefits with results by 2017.
“The team also proposes the delivery of a National Marine Spatial Planning Framework in order to enable a sustainable ocean economy by December 2015,” he said.
President Zuma said work on an Ocean Act was in progress and a draft Oceans Bill would be ready in 2015.
Oceans Act to provide clear foundation
“The Oceans Act will provide a clear foundation for marine spatial planning,” he said.
The marine transport work stream has developed 18 initiatives across three categories, including infrastructure and operations, skills and capacity building as well as market growth to accelerate sector growth.
President Zuma said the initiatives would expand the South African port capacity for repair work for oil ships and oil rigs.
“Some of the initial targets drawn up include firstly, an increase in the local manufacturing capacity through a 10 percent increase in the usage of local components for boat and ship building.
Partnership with South Korea for National Shipping Company
“Second, is an increase in the ship repair capacity in Richards Bay, thus creating 200 direct jobs,” he said.
Another target included increasing the amount of minerals exported on South African ships, which would create more than 4 000 direct jobs.
President Zuma said some of the progress made included the process of establishing a National Shipping Company in partnership with South Korea.
He said Operation Phakisa represented a new spirit of moving faster in achieving a growth target of five percent by 2019.
Adapted from SA News
Press Release: Environmentalists protest against Zuma’s plans for our coast
Earthlife Africa Durban
The national government wants to fast track service delivery and reduce unemployment and poverty through “Operation Phakisa”.
It won’t work. Phakisa has very little to do with poverty alleviation and everything to do with profits for corporates, most likely with the familiar kickbacks for well-connected tenderpreneurs and their political allies. President Jacob Zuma is releasing a report today on Operation Phakisa which may provide more details on how our coast will be plundered for short term economic gain and profit, potentially damaging our environment beyond repair. Given the dubious financial rationale behind projects like the port and offshore oil exploration in the dangerous Argulhas Current (Exxon proposes to explore at 3.5km depth), our economic, ecological and social crises will intensify.
Zuma claims that Operation Phakisa is modelled on the success of Malaysia’s “Big Fast Results” methodology. However, the Malaysian government’s “Annual Report 2011” - https://www.pmo.gov.my/dokumenattached/GTP-Report-2011/GTP_Annual_Report_2011.pdf, reveals enormous differences between South African and Malaysian conditions and state programmes.
Malaysia’s programme includes “Addressing the cost of living”. This involves improving the agriculture supply chain to ensure minimal food loss, as well as controlling the price of essential grocery items. Malaysia also doubled the number of clinics under the programme. Part of the programme was “Improving student outcomes”. Literacy and numeracy were improved under the programme so that Malaysia now has a 97% literacy rate and 98% numeracy rate for primary school children. Zuma’s government will be remembered, instead, for the culling of students: in 2009 only 22% were forced out by grade 11, and by 2013 the rate of expulsion had reached nearly 50%. These are just some of the ways that Malaysia’s success stories contrast with Zuma’s Operation Phakisa.
Earthlife Africa Durban (ELA) and the South Durban Community Environment Alliance (SDCEA) are concerned about the speed with which public participation for projects like oil exploration and shipping expansion take place, the general lack of advertising and the failure of government to address concerns of communities, labour and environmentalists. “Phakisa” means to “hurry up”, and while we would like government to hurry up and provide better health care, water and sanitation, affordable electricity, education, housing, and service delivery, public participation is something which should certainly not be hurried, especially when these plans could have such devastating long-term consequences.
The first phase of Phakisa is to explore the economic potential of our oceans, and will be carried out in 5 years. It is an absolute indictment of Zuma’s priorities that the second phase – which involves overhauling our broken primary health care system – will only take place after the first phase is completed. In other words our government will “hurry up” when it comes to providing subsidies for multi-national corporations, but will take a long time when it comes to more urgent matters like improving our healthcare system.
Our coast could be subject to huge oil spills comparable to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, with disastrous long-term consequences for the tourism and fishing industries. Were these plans to go ahead, the climate crisis would be amplified and South Africa’s own carbon-budget strategy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 34% by 2020 would be sabotaged. Companies which have applied for oil exploration licenses such as ExxonMobil (EM) have an appalling environmental record, such as the 11 million US gallon Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989 (the fishing industry has still not recovered), a 30 million gallon Brooklyn oil spill, a Baton Rouge refinery leak in June 2012 which leaked thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals, the rupture of the company’s Pegasus pipeline which spilled thousands of barrels of crude tar sands oil over the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, as well as the Yellowstone river oil spill where a pipeline break leaked 159 000 litres of oil into the Yellowstone river, to name a few.
SDCEA and ELA are concerned that should drilling commence this would break SA’s carbon budget. Already our emission rate per person is 43% higher than the global average. The vast amount of oil in existing reserves, are known as the ‘carbon bubble,’ or ‘unburnable reserves’, because if these reserves are actually brought into production, then climate change will enter the runaway stage, with extreme consequences for many species’ very survival, including our own. We should definitely not be exploring for any new reserves.
“Peak Oil” is the point in time when the maximum rate of petroleum extraction is reached after which the rate of production is expected to enter terminal decline. EM’s own spokesman has said “All the easy oil and gas has pretty much been found. Now comes the hard work in finding and producing oil from more challenging environments and work areas”. Oil exploration now takes place in environmentally sensitive areas, and deeper in the ocean where there is more risk to the environment in terms of oil spills. According to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), the peak of world oilfield discoveries occurred in 1965 and the rate of discovery has been falling steadily since. ELA believes that the hard work should go into alternatives to fossil fuels and not into chasing every last drop of oil. ELA proposed that SA should transition to a low-carbon economy and invest in improving public transport. Ecological farming could drastically reduce oil inputs while improving soils and reversing soil degradation.
EM has admitted that oil drilling will create very few jobs for South Africans. In fact the entire offshore drilling industry in the US has only created 12 500 jobs. Furthermore the profits will go overseas with very little benefit for the SA economy which EM did not dispute in a meeting with ELA and SDCEA.
Oil drilling companies want to use seismic testing to explore for oil and gas. This involves blasting air through “air guns” which should be more accurately described as air cannons. There is usually an array of about 12 - 48 of these synchronised to create a single simultaneous pulse of sound. Together about 3000-8000 cubic inches of air are fired. The sounds are powerful enough to generate echoes from several geologic boundary layers below the bottom of the ocean. There is cause for concern as whales have been found washing ashore and fleeing in panic after exposure to sonar systems. The impacts of this have been thoroughly studied and show that whales, dolphins, fish, squid and turtles are all clearly impacted by seismic testing. There are clear avoidance responses in ranges of 1 to 7km. Very little is known about marine mammal behaviour and so these activities may have effects that are not yet recognised.
ELA and SDCEA call on all South Africans to support the campaign against oil exploration and to support environmentally sustainable solutions. What is needed is mass mobilisation against the rape of our environmental resources for the sake of corporate profits and government corruption. These come at the expense of the environment and have no real benefits for SA citizens. Instead, the Million Climate Jobs campaign is worthy of support, as it seeks to identify projects which trade unions, communities and environmentalists can unite behind, in order to solve our unemployment and climate crises simultaneously. It is time for South Africa to reject fossil fuels and to move towards a sustainable future by improving public transport, localising the economy, pursuing natural farming and renewable energy.
Well said - thank you!