Global Warming - South Africa's Industries impact on its Environment

South Africa is currently the 13th largest carbon emissions emitting country in the world and the largest emitting country on the continent of Africa. This is mainly due to South Africa’s large dependence on coal power, South Africa has experienced a massive increase in fossil-fuel CO2 emissions since 1950, with 80-90% of emissions coming from our use of coal. For 2008, 85% of South Africa's fossil-fuel CO2 emissions of 119 million metric tons of carbon were from coal, another 11.6% were from oil consumption, and the rest was from cement manufacture and natural gas.  

Besides its large amount of natural minerals, South Africa’s other main industry is tourism. The tourism industry is without a doubt one of South Africa’s biggest money makers and this is due to our large amount of indigenous forests and ecosystems that are native to our land. However through processes such as fracking and other industrial movements in South Africa, we have already destroyed many of these ecosystems and wasted the land having a massive effect on our countries scientific integrity and the tourism industry. Furthermore or massive output of carbon emissions is having a large effect on the ozone layer above us and has resulted in a massive hole being formed above us resulting in a lack of protection from UV rays and widespread water shortages and in many cases huge droughts in the country. This large shortage of water has not also had a huge effect on our agricultural industry which is another one of South Africa’s biggest assets.

In order to try and limit the effect our many industries have on the ozone layer and our environment the government implied the Air Quality Act in 2004 which ensured the regulation of air quality in order to protect the environment by providing reasonable systems and laws for the prevention of pollution and ecological harm.  However this law does not prevent the use of fracking in South Africa. Fracking is the process of drilling down into the earth before a high-pressure water mixture is directed at the rock to release the gas inside. Water, sand and chemicals are injected into the rock at high pressure which allows the gas to flow out to the head of the well. Many plans have been made to frack in South Africa mainly in the Karoo region however these movements have been met with massive rejection by many ecological groups due to the fact that fracking has massive negative effects on the environment in which it is conducted. One of these main effects is the pollution of the water in the fracking region. In certain parts of Texas people are able to ignite their tap water because it is so full of the harmful gas and chemicals but into the ground water during fracking. Fracking has also been linked with earthquakes in Texas, Alaska, Ohio as well as Canada and Denmark. All of these examples are proof of how our demand for raw materials such as a coal and gas for electricity has had a hugely negative effect on our earth and that certain steps need to be implemented quickly in order to prevent this mass destruction from carrying on. 

Refrences 

www.environment.co.za/mining-2/effects-of-mining.html 

http://wwf.panda.org/who_we_are/wwf_offices/south_africa/environmental_problems__in_south_africa/ 

http://www.business.gov.au/business-topics/business-planning/environmental-management/Pages/environmental-legislation.aspx