Turkish floating generators - "compensation" aka bribe?

… phala phala dejavu?

Even worse will be the inevitable destruction of Ithala. No more maintenance of fences between, I suspect on the horizon if this is indeed achieved…

OuPoucthervangerGroetnis

… die langplaas* :rofl:

for us city dwellers, die langplaas [long farm] is the road between ranches on which illegal shooting of crossing wild animals sometimes occurs…

Wait… so they will give money, to take land that is already in South African territory, and transfer it to the government (who will probably take worse care of it), and somehow that is “ecological compensation”?

Dogshow to be honest - open bribe being paid…

Or what is on the other side of them fences…

Groetnis

…this from the person with a strong positive outlook :wink:

I don’t think I’m that person anymore, the one with the strong positive outlook. The best term I’ve got is “mixed bag”. Some things are good, some are decidedly crappy.

If it comes from the Broad Media stable (Mybroadband, DailyInvestor, BusinessTech), it’s a fairly neutral “Meh”. The above is from Amabungane, typically more trustworthy. Hence the slightly more negative response.

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From the article…in afrikaans ‘praat jou bek verby’

"Asked if Karpowership was happy with some of the offsets that had been “directed towards you”, chief commercial officer Zeynep Harezi said: “I think I know what you’re talking about — the offset for the Richards Bay black heron bird livelihood — we need to buy and donate a game reserve to DFFE [the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment] or…”

At which point she faltered: “Can I take that back? Because I actually am not super informed about it.”"

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only positive people can afford a sense of humor, first regarding themselves and next the world around them… many of them here :laughing:

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Hey, what is this … I’m extremely negative with a blerrie good sense of humor!?

Just like any good SAFFA.

EDIT: This game farm “trade” is not gonna happen … just wait for the public to get properly worked up and stop it.

you with rent-a-joke? :rofl:

So here is an interesting stat I ran across yesterday. Suicides per 100 000. Numbers are from 2019, so predate certain current events, but it was somewhat unsurprising to see Russia at the top of the list. What was a little more surprising, is to see South Africa not far behind them.

Mostly men. World-wide, suicide is very much a male problem. But that aside… it does make me wonder, to what extent is our society, for lack of a better word, sick? Something is not lekker. We live in this beautiful sunny place, and we’re offing ourselves?

I think the unemployment number may have something to do with it.

Nevertheless, I think we shouldn’t make light of our collective mental health in this regard. Something is not right.

it is clearly a bribe… grab the pitch forks…and make your way to any/all projects where environmental offset is part of the EIA.

Environmental offset has both National and Provincial guidelines (Western Cape had it from at least 2005 - copy of 2007 guideline). This is likely partly the price to pay when paving paradise to put up a parking lot

Even when offset is agreed between the applicant and local authority it does not mean the environmental approval is automatic (i.e. DFFE can still refuse approval).

Example offset scoping report for a wind farm near Kleinzee (this one even SANPARKS and WWF (panda, not wrestler) supported. Eample report for a wind farm near Kuruman where proposed offset was deemed not viable . Example for expansion of a sand mine near Robertson.

For an Amabungane article it not great (adds very little to the Bloomberg version of the game farm story that all the media houses reproduced yesterday).

The headline (“Karpowership offers to buy government a game farm”) and much of the content is not in any way substantiated. From the EIA made available for public comment Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife initiated it, it was not “offered”:

EKZNW has for many decades wished to acquire the Madaka Game Ranch which properties are collectively 1784 hectares in extent. The primary reasons for this are to increase the size of the protected area to be more ecologically viable and to contribute to black rhino, white rhino and elephant conservation. The property also has provincially important vegetation and plant species. In addition to its intrinsic value, the property serves as a strategic buffer to reduce the presence of threats immediately on the boundary of an important rhino population.

Granted, this does not rule out bribery. The biggest question mark if reading the article is whether the offset of the game farm in relation to environmental impact in the estuary is appropriate. Unfortunately we are not informed how the author makes the link between the game farm and the claim that the game farm is to “sweeten the deal” (my words) to allow powership to start operating before the actual estuary offset is completed.

The offset involves more than just buying a piece of land, the applicant also has to fund things like fencing, security, etc. for the duration of the project. It is also intended to be more than just purchasing a piece of land, it has to be added to the conservation “portfolio”.

The intention is that the Madaka Game Ranch will be incorporated into the Ithala Game Reserve, registered as a Biodiversity Protected Area, thereby contributing to the expansion of South Africa’s protected areas and improved conservation of priority fauna and flora species within the national climate change mitigation corridor.

For the “bek verby praat” part it sounds much more like “I am not sure of all the details and names of relevant departments so let me rather not make up information”.

Where was I? Oh yes, at least with load shedding we should all have torches to go with our pitch forks.

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in switzerland the right on euthanasia [actually assisted suicide] is legaly enshrined, so it would be interesting to see their suicide stats - whilst on this macabre topic have a look at this - wonder if they come in other colours than /blue/black [model t-ford] Sarco pod - Wikipedia
… the movie soylent green comes to mind…
interesting to note the inventors surname does sound disturbingly similar to Nietzsche …

That made me wonder, under the ANC Gov, have any nature reserves been taking strain, seeing that everything they are linked to, does?

We have to look at the bigger picture, not just what a very young Chief Commercial Officer believes she is doing.

We “know” what is going to happen in due course with this game farm … evidence of that is all over SA.

But thank you for the effort though, @Village_Idiot, to give a more balanced view of the facts on the table today. What is coming afterward is the thing that makes us very cynical.

There are intensions here, firstly the intent of offsetting something bad with so called something good. Fcuk how dumb are we? The game farm was there and was always doing what it was doing. It is not as if these people brought it here from Mars to help offset anything, now is it? So buying it to offset the potential (we all know it will destroy things) destruction is just wool over our eyes.

Transferring it to Government is doubly bad, more destruction to follow.

Secondly, thinking that this transfer does anything but destroying that, that is being transferred… So now we have the marine environment and then this land area, both buggered up, for money.

GeldgierigeGroetnis

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The stated goal of offsetting like this appears to take measures that increase safe space (conservtion area) that can play a role to maintain overall ecological bio-diversity - not to try and cancel out a negative from somewhere else. While the new conservation area may very well be mismanaged, civil society probably as a better chance to influence, through the courts for instance, what happens than if the area is not protected?

yup, when parliament authorised the expansion of the harbour in 1972 and actively developed the industrial and mining zone they effectively sealed the fate of the marine environment and land to be buggered up.

Appearance and reality, need I say more. They ain’t improving anything by transferring another piece of land to the state, they already the largest holder of that resource. And look at the maintenance of bio-diversity, yea ask them about their stripe mining, and attempts to mine protected areas…

Also consider the not inconsiderable failure of land transfers from commercial successful enterprises to the state, no title deeds followed, so the state retained most of the ownership. The reasons for failure in this context is immaterial, just the failures themselves. A pattern anyone, no?

Once again, me the broken record, past behaviour and all that… It is so predictable it’s not even funny. Bunch of moronic ideologues…

Groetnis