Abstract
Air quality problems have been an inescapable partner of global economic development, and such problems have prevailed since the industrial age. After the democratisation of South Africa in 1994, the government embarked on a law reforming process to bring all the laws of the country in line with the new constitution of South Africa. This process included air quality legislation. Air quality management in South Africa has undergone drastic changes with the implementation of the National Environmental: Air Quality Act (Act 39 of 2004). In the previous dispensation, the Air Pollution Prevention Act (1965), emphasised point-source control, but the new act shifted the emphasis from point-source control to reactively protecting the receiving environment. In keeping with the new approach, municipalities are now required to compile, implement and maintain air quality management plans. Although, this is an explicit requirement of the Act, no guidelines exist for regulating bodies regarding the content of such plans. In this paper, a framework for generic air quality management plans for municipalities is proposed. This framework was compiled using information gained during a literature study of two countries where the implementation of air quality management plans has brought about an improvement in air quality, as well as two other countries where despite implementation of such plans, air quality has deteriorated. The information gained from the literature study was used to compile questionnaires that were distributed to all metropolitan councils and district municipalities (N = 54) in South Africa. To obtain a comprehensive, contextualised view on the issue, industries (N = 1 290) were also included in the study. The main contribution of this study was the compilation of a framework for a generic air quality management plan to be used by municipal authorities. Due to the fact that lack of training has been identified as a critical gap in the successful implementation and maintenance of an air quality management plan, this study also makes a significant contribution to the identification of generic training outcomes. Key words: Air quality management plans, air quality, municipality, local authorities, local government, framework, training outcomes
Highlights
Management of air quality, to protect human health and the environment, is a major challenge facing countries in Africa
Key results that flowed from this study can be summarised as follows: 1) The highest response rate came from Environmental Health Departments indicating their involvement and motivation to be part of AQM. 2) The appointment of air pollution control officers is very slow and needs urgent attention as it is a legal requirement
4) The most important contribution of this study, is the fact that a generic air quality management framework can be applied, supported by generic data input, generic training outcomes to strengthen capacity as well as benefits derived from implemented frameworks
Summary
Management of air quality, to protect human health and the environment, is a major challenge facing countries in Africa. National and local authorities in Africa recognise the need to improve or maintain the quality of air to protect human health as well as the environment. National, and regional authorities need to develop the appropriate capacity and capabilities for air quality management in order to set air quality and emission standards and implement air pollution control and monitoring strategies (Van Teinhoven and Simukanga, 2004). In Southern Africa, the SAFARI (2000) experiment has demonstrated that regional air quality is mostly determined by emissions from biogenetic processes, biomass
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