Towards a comprehensive framework to govern the main sustainability issues of inland industrial complexes

Abstract

Economic expansions generally mean that more natural resources will be used. Apart from increasing pressure on the environment, an array of social and institutional implications is also associated with the expansions. This is especially true for inland industrial complexes in South Africa. The social and economic benefits warrant the government’s support of such industrial complexes, but the negative consequences, for present and future generations, need to be considered in a comprehensive manner to govern the complexes. The study subsequently set out to determine what constitutes the sustainability of an inland industrial complex with respect to governance issues. That is, what sustainability includes, for whom, and why sustainability is pursued, so that the goals for various stakeholders can be defined. Rather than an exact, quantitative model to measure the sustainability, a qualitative framework was developed to determine appropriate strategies, and to know how those strategies will influence the system. The framework is a combination of qualitative system dynamics and the general protocol for translating visions into goals for multi-party systems; the non threatening characteristic of the system dynamics approach and the ability to model a complex system in an understanding way is combined with the specificity of the nationally accepted general protocol, which is used for obtaining consensus in a multi-party system. Information about the sustainability of inland industrial complexes was obtained from an existing complex that has been monitored frequently. The most important criteria, or performance indicators, are defined, which can be used to evaluate the extent to which sustainable development is achieved. For this set of criteria to be complete, the nature of the problem was analysed and the different (stakeholder) perceptions of sustainable development were taken into account. This provided insight into the main problems of inland industrial complexes in a broader perspective and contributed to setting the boundaries right and finding proper directions for solutions. From a water resources perspective these solutions need to address the following main (system) problems: if water is polluted more, then industry uses more water; if water is scarce, the price does not go up under free market conditions; and there is a time delay to adapt the price of water to the scarcity. The paper concludes how governance interventions may address these problems of inland industrial complexes.