ment. Moreover, the identity of that person need not be disclosed in the risk assessment. Furthermore, DEA and SANBI’s risk assessment need not be independently reviewed by an expert. Much tougher rules apply to everyone else. Risk assessments must be undertaken by independent and suitably qualified Risk Assessment Facilitators who must, as a basic minimum, be registered in terms of the National Scientific Professions Act. The tough rules that qualify Risk Assessment Facilitators are a good thing as this provides for a peer based system that aims to ensure independence and professionalism, as well as giving clients and the public some recourse if the Risk Assessment Facilitator is negligent or operates in fields where he or she is not qualified. Most importantly, it provides the public with a reasonable assurance that registered persons are independent, competent, ethical and professional. The public has no such assurance when dealing with a risk assessment prepared by DEA or SANBI. This double standard is probably unlawful, but it also has serious practical drawbacks that go beyond the lack of integrity inherent in DEA’s internal risk assessment processes. Peer review is just that. So how does a non-professional “scientist” legitimately review the work of a registered professional scientist? Professional institutions do not take kindly to a registered member’s work being reviewed by persons of no professional standing. It makes a mocker y of the peer review system and destroys legitimacy and functionality of the process itself. DEA and SANBI do not have to disclose who authored their risk assessments. This is problematic as it makes it difficult to determine if the person undertaking the risk assessment is suitably qualified to do so. However, if you delve into the meta data embedded in the electronic versions of the “approved risk assessments”, you will find that Philip Ivey is described as the author and that the documents were created by him on 6 March 2018. This was actually three weeks after the Draft AIS lists were published for comment on 16 February! Interestingly, both documents were subsequently modified by Dr Guy Preston 12 • FLYFISHING June 2018
the following day. This is consistent with earlier draft versions which were also created by Mr Ivey and later modified by Dr Preston. Dr Preston is the Deputy Director General at DEA and is the driving force behind DEA’s efforts to list trout as invasive. He is on record as saying that he is convinced that trout are invasive. Mr Ivey used to work for SANBI but retired in 2016 and was working at the Centre for biological control, Zoology and Entomology at Rhodes University when the trout risk assessments were “approved”. Mr Ivey did not work for either DEA or SANBI when the approved trout risk assessments were finalised. Furthermore, it is difficult to see how he can be suitably qualified given that his field of expertise is botany. A search in April 2018 of the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions registered persons database <www.sacnasp.co.za> does not reflect Mr Ivey or Dr Preston as registered professional scientists. But it is worse than that. Both men are hopelessly conflicted. Dr Preston’s involvement is grotesque given his preconceived views regarding trout and the role he has and is still playing to try and get trout listed as invasive. Mr Ivey was appointed as the independent facilitator responsible for driving the trout mapping exercise around the time the first version of the trout risk assessments were published. Yet he did not disclose his role in preparing these risk assessments at any time during his appointment. He was later required to give up this role after FOSAF and Trout SA lodged a formal complaint that he was biased. So what we have is DEA briefing people who are demonstrably incapable and even unqualified to make an independent assessment of whether trout are in fact invasive, applying an inappropriate process to the question which is then adapted to avoid any inconvenient facts that suggest that this is not the case. These “trout risk assessments” fall way short of what is legally required to justify listing trout as invasive. The risk assessments provided are so fundamentally flawed on so many levels that one wonders how they were ever allowed into the public domain let alone to be
used to justify listing trout as invasive. At one level they point to why it is undesirable that DEA should not be subjected to the same standards as that required of the public. At another it is clear is that these risk assessments are a very poor attempt to pass off what appears to be a biased, unscientific, slapdash and perhaps even a disingenuous attempt to justify the belief that trout are invasive in South Africa despite the lack of any evidence to this effect. DEFENDING THE ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHT (AND TROUT) IN PARLIAMENT By Ian Cox
T
HE Portfolio Committee for the Environment held hearings in late April on changes that the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) wants to make to South Africa’s environmental laws including National Environmental Management Act (NEMBA). The amendments will do away with the present legal regime that restricts DEA to listing a species as invasive in order to eradicate that species or take steps to remove and contain it. Instead DEA will be given wide discretionary powers not only to list species as invasive but also to decide what must be done with a species once it has been listed as invasive. I participated in these hearings as part of a team representing a constituency of 18 organisations which includes FOSAF and whose livelihoods depend on the sustainable use of biological resources We adopted a different approach to most parties presenting to the Portfolio Committee in that we asked the Portfolio Committee to uphold and defend the Constitution, the rule of law and due process rather than amend NEMBA in any particular way. We pointed out that DEA had somehow contrived to enact NEMBA without completing the green and white paper policy-making process. We complained that DEA were in fact trying to implement NEMBA by applying its draft biodiversity white paper which was published for discussion in 1997. This is despite the fact that the nature-first