Submission to Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources on the MPRDA Amendment Bill: Closure, rehabilitation and financial provision (section 43 of the Act)

A joint submission by environmental organisations to the South African Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources regarding the MPRDA Amendment Bill. The authors support the principle that mining right holders remain responsible for environmental liabilities regardless of a closure certificate but strongly oppose a proposed 20-year limit on the Minister's ability to retain financial provisions for latent impacts, arguing that such a period is arbitrary and often insufficient to cover long-term issues like acid mine drainage.

• The submitters support the proposed amendment to section 43(1) of the Bill, which ensures that the holder of a mining or prospecting right remains responsible for environmental liability, pollution, and sustainable closure even after the Minister has issued a closure certificate.
• The proposed 20-year limit in section 43(6) for the Minister to retain financial provisions for latent or residual safety, health, or environmental impacts is criticised as arbitrary and potentially too short.
• Evidence is provided that environmental impacts, specifically acid mine drainage (AMD), can manifest long after the proposed 20-year retention window; for example, AMD can start over 40 years after closure, and impacts from gold mining in the Witwatersrand are felt 100 years later.
• The submitters argue that the retention period for financial provisions should be based on the predicted life of the impacts, as assessed at the cessation of mining and reviewed annually, rather than a fixed timeframe.
• The coalition proposes that the Bill should include a mechanism for the independent review of the adequacy of financial provisions, a recommendation derived from a 2012 WWF-SA report that the authors claim was ignored by the Department of Mineral Resources.
• The submitters express concern that the parliamentary process has separated the hearings for the MPRDA Amendment Bill and the National Environmental Management Laws Amendment Bill 26 of 2013 (NEMLAB 3), despite the fact that financial provision and mine closure issues are integrally linked across both pieces of legislation.

APA

Botha, M. (2013). Submission to Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources on the MPRDA Amendment Bill: Closure, rehabilitation and financial provision (section 43 of the Act). Centre for Environmental Rights. https://cer.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Joint-Submission-on-MPRDA-Amendment-Bill-6-Sept-2013-Closure-rehabilitation-and-financial-provision.pdf?x21779

Chicago

Botha, Mark. Submission to Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources on the MPRDA Amendment Bill: Closure, rehabilitation and financial provision (section 43 of the Act). Centre for Environmental Rights, 2013. https://cer.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Joint-Submission-on-MPRDA-Amendment-Bill-6-Sept-2013-Closure-rehabilitation-and-financial-provision.pdf?x21779.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |last1=Botha |first1=Mark |title=Submission to Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources on the MPRDA Amendment Bill: Closure, rehabilitation and financial provision (section 43 of the Act) |publisher=Centre for Environmental Rights |date=6 September 2013 |url=https://cer.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Joint-Submission-on-MPRDA-Amendment-Bill-6-Sept-2013-Closure-rehabilitation-and-financial-provision.pdf?x21779 |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{botha2013submission, author = {Botha, Mark}, title = {{Submission to Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources on the MPRDA Amendment Bill: Closure, rehabilitation and financial provision (section 43 of the Act)}}, publisher = {Centre for Environmental Rights}, year = {2013}, month = sep, url = {https://cer.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Joint-Submission-on-MPRDA-Amendment-Bill-6-Sept-2013-Closure-rehabilitation-and-financial-provision.pdf?x21779}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }