The Anomaly that is Section 24G of NEMA: An Impediment to Sustainable Development

By | 5th September 2013

This article weaves together Lauren’s knowledge of administrative law, environmental law, good governance and competition law. It won the 2016 UCT Law Faculty’s Research Prize (1st place) as ‘the most outstanding article in a peer-reviewed journal’, with the anonymous reviewer commending it for drawing ‘extensively on environmental law, competition law and administrative law…dealing with a really important issue, well-argued and very well supported in terms of authorities; a very solid and useful scholarly piece’.

In the article, Lauren critiques the erstwhile formulation of section 24G of the National Environmental Management Act, 1998, and her proposals for reform have since (in part) been implemented. The legislature has finally made certain amendments to section 24G along the lines Lauren suggested. For example, the provision is no longer entitled: ‘[r]ectification of unlawful commencement or continuation of [a] listed activity’. In her article, Lauren explained the inherently anomalous idea of ‘rectifying the unlawful’, and the principled and practical concerns this raises. Section 24G is now headed simply, ‘[c]onsequences of unlawful commencement of activity’ (emphasis added).

Lauren’s article has become the ‘gold-standard on retrospective environmental authorisations in SA’ and is prescribed at several law schools across the country. It has been cited by leading academics in the field, including, for example, Jan Glazewski Environmental Law in South Africa (at para 10.3.2.4 Section 24: Environmental assessments and Authorisations).

Download a copy of the original article as published in the SAJELP here.

Citation: Kohn, L ‘The Anomaly that is Section 24G of NEMA: An Impediment to Sustainable Development’ (2012) 19 South African Journal of Environmental Law & Policy 1