Abstract

The current process of social and political change in South Africa has generated wide debates around future policy options for the post-apartheid period. This project will contribute to the debates by emphasizing the environmental factors in these policies. The project will investigate the environmental impact of military activities during the past two decades. It will also make recommendations on the possibilities for redirecting the existing military resources to environmental conservation and protection.

Post-Project Summary

"Environmental effects" was broadly defined to include not just military actions but also military research and development (R&D), maneuvers, production of military materials, disposal of toxic wastes, etc. In fact, however, the Group for Environmental Monitoring (GEM) concentrated its efforts - research and advocacy - on the issues of political importance to South Africa at the time the project was underway, such as the ban on landmines and reductions in the military budget. A lot of emphasis was placed on conversion of military land to other uses (e.g. reallocation to dispossessed blacks) and the defense industry to other purposes. The team organized workshops at the national level to develop broad guidelines for conversion and at the local level to deal with specific plants. Some of this work contributed to the lobby against small arms (guns) in the South African population. The team produced a large volume of published and gray literature most notably the book, From Defense to Development : the Conversion of Military Resources in South Africa, Cock and McKenzie, eds.

The project fell short of its objectives in two ways. First, intense concentration on South Africa left little time or money for in-depth investigation of the situation in Angola and Mozambique. Second, and more importantly, the researchers did not go as far as to identify links between military activity and environmental disruption that could be generalized. In other words, it is not clear which activities were most disruptive nor whether the disruption was to some extent a result of the unique nature of the military-civil relationship in apartheid South Africa. Thus it was not possible to develop a hypothesis on the relationship between militarism and ecology.

Recipient Institution(s)