Citizen-focused initiative gains ground and recognition in South Africa
#GreenAlert
At an Editors Lab hackathon back in September 2013, a team from The Oxpeckers Center for Investigative Environmental Journalism — Africa’s first journalistic investigation unit focusing on environmental issues — put together an innovative plan: to build a mobile app that would alert residents to developments happening in their backyard.
The problem, they said, was that although South Africa has laws and processes in place for public participation, people affected by local change usually struggle to access critical information about what is happening.
The team’s solution was to build an app based on data sets from environmental impact assessments (EIAs) that would enable users to search for developments in their area, give inputs where appropriate, and register to receive alerts whenever new information became available.
This was the start of #GreenAlert , an open-source web and mobi platform that provides citizens with a simple tool to track EIAs and other land use change notices, and that aims to stimulate public engagement and debate around new developments.
#GreenAlert built on a pilot project in Ghana, ‘Where My Money Dey?’, designed to improve public accountability and civic engagement through active citizenry, and was developed by the tech team at Code for Kenya on behalf of Oxpeckers.
#MineAlert
Based on the #GreenAlert project, Oxpeckers went on to build a similar initiative in the mining sector. Called #MineAlert, this app is a centralised platform for users to access, track and share information and documents on mining applications and licences.
Both tools are citizen-focused web-based apps that aim to promote transparency and informed citizenry. Using location-based alerts for development applications, they provide access to important documents such as water use licences, environmental authorisations, and mining social & labour plans.
The first iteration of #MineAlert was developed by ScienceLink and was launched in April 2016.
Oxpeckers are proud to report that by the end of 2017 they have not only become the talk of the town, grown their user and partnership base, but have also successfully managed to make mining-affected communities and other interested and affected parties part of the mining conversation.
The team has secured 3,000-plus mining-related documents and data entries on the platform. Their users range from lawyers, activists, mining-affected communities and policy makers to journalists who, through Oxpeckers’ investigations, are able to review the effectiveness of mining regulations and policies.
One of the highlights of 2017 for Oxpeckers was winning an SAB EnviroMedia Award for data-based investigations into financial provisions for mine closures and rehabilitation. This level of recognition proved that they are on the right path to rooting out maladministration in the extractives industry.
Changing law
A few weeks later, Oxpeckers learnt that the government is amending the regulations pertaining to Financial Provision for Prospecting, Exploration, Mining or Productions Operations. The revised regulations will repeal and replace the Financial Provisioning Regulations of 2015 and include changes in the calculation of financial provisions.
Being asked to present this work at a session on ‘Digging into Extractives’ at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in November 2017 was another achievement for the team.
#MineAlert has wrapped up 2017 on a high note, and has ambitious plans for expansion in 2018. Watch this space.
#MineAlert is being pioneered by Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism, with support from the Open Society Foundation for South Africa and Code for Africa
Meanwhile, updating the data inputs on #GreenAlert have been put on hold. In 2016, Oxpeckers formed a partnership with Open Data Durban as part of the alertME project in order to produce an API that would automatically populate the platform with data from the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA). After months of meetings, this proposal was unsuccessful.
Processes under the Promotion of Access to Information Act to obtain the data in spreadsheet form have been launched. The team was informed by the national office of DEA that they would have to make these requests to each of the nine separate provincial offices of the department. In early 2017 data inputs on #GreenAlert were interrupted because Oxpeckers did not have the resources to undertake this mammoth data-gathering process. As their experience on #MineAlert has shown, gathering data from provincial offices is time-consuming and costly.
The team at Oxpeckers is still hopeful that they will find a sponsor in future to turn #GreenAlert into a successful platform, similar to the #MineAlert platform. Watch this space.
Oxpeckers’ hard work uncovering environmental crimes across Southern Africa costs time and money. A donation of as little as R20 can help keep our reporters on the case, and keep the pressure on those looking to exploit our natural resources for personal gain. You too can support Oxpeckers and tools such as #MineAlert here.
This post originally appeared on Oxpeckers’ publication.
