South Africa is renowned for the richness of its plant and animal life. Tourists come in their millions to spot penguins off the Western Cape, and witness big game in Limpopo’s Kruger Park or the coastal forests of KwaZulu-Natal.
The country has seven distinct biomes and its waters are home to about 15% of the world’s marine species. But South Africa is also experiencing an array of challenges such as sky-high unemployment, inequality and energy shortages. The government says it is determined to promote economic development, sometimes through projects that do not necessarily benefit nature.
A year ago, Dion George of the Democratic Alliance party was entrusted to lead the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment as part of a coalition government. This was after the African National Congress lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994. Now, South Africa is chairing the G20 group of nations, and the coalition government has pledged “solidarity, equality, sustainability” before the leaders’ summit taking place in Johannesburg in November.
On his 59th birthday in May, George was aboard the Agulhas II research vessel, owned by the department he leads, as it embarked on a demonstration cruise from Durban to Cape Town. Dialogue Earth was also on board the vessel and spoke to him.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Dialogue Earth: To start with a challenging question, is a polar-class research vessel a worthwhile investment for a developing country?
Dion George: There will always be questions around where you spend money, and people who think you should spend it elsewhere. But we’re the only African country with a ship like this. We’re doing this for the entire continent, and the information we gather benefits the world. This ship gathers valuable oceanographic data from the waters between South Africa and Antarctica, an area that scientists believe plays a vital role in the global climate.
Many people want to collaborate with us. I think that we as politicians often underestimate the value of that sort of scientific diplomacy.
Now, obviously, money is tight. That’s the difficulty in South Africa. We’ve got great plans, but we haven’t got money. So we have to be creative and not just sit back and hope for the best. I am exploring the possibility of establishing an environmental prize – a minister’s prize in South Africa – to encourage people to think innovatively. We’ve got a young population and a lot of creative and curious people who can come up with amazing things. Maybe there will be 1,000 things that we try that don’t work, but maybe we’ll find that one thing that will change everything.
How are changing geopolitical realities, particularly the new US administration, affecting discussions on the environment?
It’s an unfolding story. Of course we know that the [US] federal government’s interest in climate change mitigation and adaptation is low. However, they are still interested in some of our other priorities, such as biodiversity and conservation, and security. So there are areas where we can collaborate. There are also some US states that are very interested in climate change – California and New York in particular – and I will engage with them.
As you are aware, our president [Cyril Ramaphosa] recently met with Donald Trump in Washington. They had… well, they had a conversation. But it was a good conversation because it was an opportunity to reset the relationship.
I think it’s very fortunate that it happens to be South Africa that is the president of the G20 at this time. We are a non-aligned country; we talk to everybody. We remain very hopeful that the US will want to work with us in the future. But even if the US decides it won’t participate in the summit – which I actually don’t think will be the case – that does not stop us from pursuing our objectives.
Your party, the Democratic Alliance, was in opposition previously and is now part of a coalition. How does this affect discussions around conservation?
We have a very unusual situation in South Africa. We are a coalition, but parties in it, like mine, are still in opposition in some policy areas.
I do think there’s going to be a bit of abrasion as we go forward. In many developing countries, there is a view that you need to be dirty before you can be clean [regarding pollution and development]; that this is what happened in other countries.
For instance, I’m the appeal authority on new mining proposals. And I know that in the past, the ruling party’s political machinery did try to influence such decisions. Me? I’m not reachable by that party machine at all. So I can do my job without fear, favour or prejudice.
As a developing country, how does South Africa balance economic development, such as mining, with environmental protection?
This is the debate we’re constantly having. We want to reduce poverty and inequality, get people into jobs, and grow the economy. At the same time, we recognise that our environment must be protected.
Developed countries had the benefit of burning coal for 200 years. They were dirty, and then they got clean. If you take our developmental timeline into consideration, we have not had that benefit – we are still developing. So the debate is: how far do you go in terms of environmental impact to grow your economy? That balance is not easy to find.
My constitutional mandate is that we must have a healthy environment, balanced with the need for justifiable, sustainable economic development. There are many contentious issues on my desk.
Are there decisions you’ve made that show that tension?
We have ship-to-ship refuelling at sea. It’s a pollution hazard and I’m going to regulate it. I expect there will be a lot of noise about that.
We’ve made real progress on this balanced approach. We recently secured a groundbreaking deal between the fishing industry and conservation organisations to limit fishing near South African penguin colonies. This will mean more food for these charismatic birds, which contribute to our tourism income.
On oceans more generally, how is South Africa doing on the global goal to protect 30% of its waters by 2030?
We are firmly committed to implementing the ocean target. It forms the cornerstone of our national efforts to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services that are critical to climate resilience and sustainable development. To meet it, we need to expand our marine protected areas [MPAs] by an additional 30.4 million hectares by 2030 – a 24.6% increase [in the amount of total ocean protected], averaging 5.06 million hectares per year. In 2024/25 we secured 104,840 hectares.
My own view is that we should only expand our MPAs to what can, in fact, be protected. I don’t want to have areas that are only protected on paper – that really is pointless. We do have challenges with illicit fishing, for instance, in some of our protected areas. We are taking steps to counter that, but it’s not easy because we’ve got a massively long coastline.
How do you think marine conservation efforts in other African countries are going?
From my experience with my counterparts, I do think that there is a large appetite for marine protection across Africa. At the same time, there is the issue of economic development. You do want to have communities be able to access resources sustainably, because if you can’t, then there’s going to be no incentive at all to preserve it.
My counterparts across the continent battle with the same issues we do: surveilling effectively our oceans and battling illicit fishing. In South Africa, we do have some surveillance capacity so we can see what ships are in our waters. And we do have some policing capacity, although not as much as I’d like, and I’m working on that.
This post contains content that was first published on Dialogue Earth and republished here under a Creative Commons BY NC ND License. Read the original article.
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