Participatory democracy meets the hard rock of energy policy: South Africa's National Integrated Resource Plan

摘要

South Africa faces a demanding period of policymaking in search of sustainable energy solutions, which are required if the country is to reduce future increase in its greenhouse gas emissions. The most recent platform for this process was the drafting of the Integrated Resource Plan 2 (IRP 2). The Constitutional provisions that require participation in law-making have been strengthened, placing an onus on government to facilitate public involvement. This article examines the extent to which constitutional and statutory duty to permit meaningful public participation was met in developing the IRP2. In South Africa there are many obstacles to effective engagement, attenuated by the complexities of the political context, social inequities, and imperatives of economic growth. The case demonstrates that where civil society organizations develop strategic and technical capacity, they can begin to overcome these obstacles and compete with incumbent corporate stakeholders whose vested interest lies in monopolizing more secretive and exclusionary decision processes, where government departments struggle to address the scale, urgency and inter-connected complexity of sustainable development. But the IRP 2 case study is also a cautionary tale that demonstrates the limits of what can be achieved through constructive dialogue if stakeholders have uneven access to decision-making processes and uneven capacity to have influence, especially in processes where a premium is placed on technical expertise and where that expert knowledge may be used to manipulate outcomes.View full textDownload full textKeywordspublic participation, energy policy, South Africa, integrated resource planning, electricityRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2012.709688