The Purpose of this document is to make legislation and policy more accessible to role players in the broad water management field (and therefore inevitably in the field of environmental governance) for the purpose of ecological risk assessments, impact assessments and any other possible uses. This document does not replace the Acts and White Papers, but act as a reference guide to relevant water issues addressed in legislation (Applications), or as a summary of water related issues under each Act or White Paper (Legislation).

Legislation excerpts are condensed under water related headings like "Integrated Catchment Management", "Ecosystems" and "Water Resource Management". These  headings are listed under "Applications" with links to all the different application pages. The text contains links to the relevant legislation summaries. The vertical navigation bar on the left enables quick viewing of a specific application.

It is important to understand the difference between legislation such as Acts and regulations on the one hand and administrative guidelines such as White Papers on the other. Legislation must be complied with. Administrative guidelines should be used by all role players. In the normal course of events, the guidelines will be followed fairly strictly as if they are legislation. The special circumstances that may emerge for specific projects may however make it advisable and reasonable under the circumstances. In such a case it is necessary to depart from the guidelines. You will find an indication in the different pages what is legislation and what are guidelines.

The acts, regulations and White Papers regarding water related issues are summarized and listed here. On the left hand side of the legislation pages, links back to the relevant applications are found.

All water management and environmental control and protection processes rely increasingly on a process of strategic integrated resource planning and management. You are referred to the "Planning" page for more information in this regard.

Links to websites of related implementation examples are awaited for this section.

View the navigation diagram.

The idea is that this document retain dynamic status through input from all its users. Please report missing links, links that can be added to streamline browsing, links for your "application" that are not listed here and anything else that can be added or removed to make this document useful.

Comments are needed and will be valued.
wstrydom@csir.co.za