ABSTRACT

Mining has considerable impacts on natural ecosystems. To mitigate these impacts, regulators rely on environmental legislation to promote sustainable mining practices. It is, however, not always apparent whether these regulatory processes actually result in reduced impacts on the ground. Postmasburg is a unique case study for evaluating the efficacy of environmental legislation because it contains, within a small geographical area, several mines with origins both before and after the promulgation of modern environmental legislation in South Africa. This chapter summarises the impacts of these different mines and evaluates whether modern mines, developed during a period of stringent environmental legislation, have succeeded in reducing their impacts on natural ecosystems.