Provincial standard draft environmental bylaws for local government in the North West Province / Themba Wilson Ndongeni

• Main Author: Ndongeni, Themba Wilson
• Published: North-West University 2013
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10394/8097

A crucial challenge facing South African municipalities today, particularly in the North West Province (NWP), is the execution of sustainable environmental governance in local communities. The challenge has been brought about, inter alia, by the new constitutional framework regulating local government. Today, municipalities do not only constitute the sphere of government that is closest to the people, but they must also provide services to local communities in a sustainable manner whilst securing development among community members. Although, local government is an autonomous sphere of government – all three (the national, provincial and local) spheres are interdependent and interrelated. They must support and monitor each other to ensure the realisation of environmentally relevant rights, among others. They are further mandated by the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (the Constitution), as well as legislation, together to realise people's substantive environmental rights by legislating on certain environmental issues, for example. However, sustainable service delivery by municipalities in the NWP, in particular, is compromised by an array of factors. One of them is the bylaw–making capacity of municipalities in the Province. In order to address this, the NWP provincial legislature can however enact generic type bylaws (Standard Draft Bylaws) (SDBs) which can then be adapted by each municipality. The province must further monitor the performance by municipalities with respect to all issues falling within the regulatory domain of local government by virtue of the Constitution. This dissertation focuses on the worth and use of SDBs in addressing the bylaw–making gap in the NWP specifically with regard to environmental governance and the provision of environmental services. The dissertation questions and aims to estimate how the constitutional and legislative environmental duties of local government should be translated in environmental bylaws and specifically, how provincial environmental SDBs could provide support in this regard. The study looks at the NWP as a case study. === Thesis (LLM (Environmental Law and Governance))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.