UN secretary general António Guterres established the Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals to develop guiding principles which can serve as “guardrails for the energy transition”. It is co-chaired by ambassador Nozipho Joyce Mxakato-Diseko of South Africa and director general for energy Ditte Juul Jørgensen of the European Commission.

The panel’s report on critical energy transition minerals comes at a crucial time, Guterres said in a statement. “We established the panel in response to calls from developing countries, amid signs that the energy transition could reproduce and amplify inequalities of the past, banishing developing countries to the bottom of value chains to watch others grow rich by exploiting their people and putting their environment in jeopardy.”

The report identifies ways to ground the renewables revolution in justice and equity, “so that it spurs sustainable development, respects people, protects the environment, and powers prosperity in resource-rich developing countries”, Guterres added.

The panel’s recommendations include establishing a high-level expert advisory group housed in the UN to facilitate multi-stakeholder policy dialogue and coordination on economic issues in mineral value chains, to a global traceability, transparency and accountability framework.

Other recommendations include creating a fund to address legacy problems linked to derelict, ownerless and abandoned mines, and empowering artisanal and small-scale miners to become “agents of transformation”.

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C to avert the worst effect of climate change will depend on the sufficient, reliable and affordable supply of critical energy transition minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare earth elements, which are essential components of clean energy technologies — from wind turbines and solar panels to electric vehicles

and battery storage.

At the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai (COP28), governments agreed to triple the roll-out of renewable energy and double energy efficiency by 2030. The International Energy Agency estimates that demand for the critical energy transition minerals required to enable this will triple by 2030 and quadruple by 2040.

A transition of this magnitude brings with it tremendous opportunities, but also substantial challenges, the panel’s report said. 

“Mining, at all scales, large and small, has too often been linked with human rights abuses, environmental degradation and conflict. Indigenous peoples’ lands and resources have been dispossessed and the lives of local peoples upended,” it said.

Responsible companies working to reform the sector continue to face an “uneven playing field”, with insufficient incentives for irresponsible actors to meet acceptable standards.

For countries with the critical energy transition minerals required for these technologies,

including developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific, the opportunity is significant.

Meeting this challenge in a principled way can only be done if governments, business, civil society and the UN act together to properly manage mineral value chains, uphold the rule of law in a non-discriminatory way, respect national sovereignty, invest in true multilateralism and peacebuilding and ensure universal human rights are protected, the report noted.

It issues recommendations for fairness, transparency, investment, sustainability and human rights along the entire value chain. 

“This is a time when cooperation is paramount for nations to effectively address multiple crises,” said Mxakato-Diseko. 

“With climate change at the centre of these crises, there is urgency to work together with a clear understanding that we either sink together or rise together, on the basis of the common values that have bound nations together thus far, with human rights, justice, equity and benefit sharing guiding us towards shared global prosperity.”

Guterres has asked the co-chairs and panel to consult and share the report and its recommendations with member states and other stakeholders ahead of COP29 later this year.

of San Miguel de Aquila in Mexico from years of abuse by mining giant Ternium. 

In January last year, both defenders disappeared. Neither have been found. Three months after they vanished, anti-mining activist Eustacio Alcalá also disappeared, and was found dead two days later.

Their case is featured in a new report by the environmental and human rights watchdog, Global Witness, on the killings of land and environmental defenders in 2023, which noted that there is no hard evidence that Ternium or its employees have ordered or carried out any disappearances of land defenders.

The presence of iron ore mining in the region has contributed to a “microcosm of competing interests” including the territorial expansion of organised criminals and worsening violence, the report said. 

“I wish the world could see the destruction mining causes in Aquila — to our environment, to us,” Lagunes’ daughter Brenda said in the report. “I wish they could see how the water in the river has disappeared, just as my father and Ricardo have.”

Global Witness documented that 196 defenders were murdered last year after exercising their right to protect their lands and the environment from harm, warning that the actual number is likely to be higher.

There are “countless stories of defender courage we want to tell but can’t”, the NGO said. 

Around the world, those who oppose the abuse of their homes and lands are met with violence and intimidation. Yet, the full scope of these attacks remains hidden, while many killings go unreported. 

“Fear of retaliation keeps families from seeking justice, and communities are coerced into silence. Journalists become targets,” it said. “Stories are buried, covered up, erased. Often, we have very little information about a case at all. Many defenders will remain unnamed, their sacrifices unacknowledged, their stories of defiance untold.”

A “disturbingly small percentage of cases” result in perpetrators being held accountable and families may never find justice or closure, nor feel safe to speak out. The truth is obscured by a system of complicity: compromised civic spaces, rampant corruption and dysfunctional legal systems. “Erasure is a form of attack too.”

That 196 defenders were murdered in 2023 tips the total number of killings to more than 2000 globally since Global Witness started reporting data in 2012. The NGO estimates that the total now stands at 2 106 murders. 

More than 1 500 defenders have been murdered since the adoption of the Paris Agreement on climate change on 12 December 2015. 

“Murder continues to be a common strategy for silencing defenders and is unquestionably the most brutal. But as this report shows, lethal attacks often occur alongside wider retaliations against defenders who are being targeted by government, business and other non-state actors with violence, intimidation, smear campaigns and criminalisation. This is happening in every region of the world and in almost every sector.”

Once again, Latin America had the highest number of recorded killings worldwide, with 166 killings overall — 54 killings in Mexico and Central America and 112 in South America.

Overall, for the second year running, Colombia was found to be the deadliest country in the world, with a record 79 deaths in total last year — compared to 60 in 2022, and 33 in 2021. This is the most defenders killed in one country in a single year Global Witness has ever recorded. 

With 461 killings from 2012 to 2023, Colombia has the highest number of reported environmental defender killings globally on record. In Brazil, 25 murders were documented, while 18 were documented in Mexico and a further 18 in Honduras.

In Africa, two defenders were murdered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one in Rwanda and one in Ghana in 2023. Between 2012 and 2023, 116 defenders were murdered on the continent, most of them park rangers in the DRC (74). 

“We have also documented cases in Kenya (six), South Africa (six), Chad (five), Uganda (five), Liberia (three) and Burkina Faso (two), among other countries,” the report said.  “These chilling figures are most likely a gross underestimate as access to information continues to be a challenge across the continent.”

In Europe and North America, defenders are also “facing increasingly difficult situations as they exercise the right to protest”. Four demonstrators were killed in Panama last year, while two were killed in Indonesia. 

In the United States, a police officer shot dead an environmental defender who was demonstrating against the destruction of a forest to make way for a police training complex. 

Worldwide, Indigenous peoples and Afrodescendents continue to be disproportionately targeted, accounting for 49% of total murders.

While establishing a direct relationship between the murder of a defender and specific corporate interests remains difficult, Global Witness identified mining as the “biggest industry driver by far”, with 25 defenders killed after opposing mining operations in 2023. Other industries include fishing (five), logging (five), agribusiness (four), roads and infrastructure (four) and hydropower (two). 

In total, 23 of the 25 mining-related killings globally last year happened in Latin America. But more than 40% of all mining-related killings from 2012 to 2023 occurred in Asia, which is home to significant natural reserves of key critical minerals vital for clean energy technologies.

“This report shows that in every region of the world, people who speak out and call attention to the harm caused by extractive industries — like deforestation, pollution and land grabbing — face violence, discrimination and threats,” Nonhle Mbuthuma, a 2024 Goldman prize winner and founder of the Amadiba Crisis Committee, wrote in the foreword. “We are land and environmental defenders. And when we speak up many of us are attacked for doing so.”

Being an environmental defender does not come without personal sacrifice, she said. “Decades of working to protect our planet has taken a toll on me physically and emotionally. There is a hidden cost to our activism. For years, I have faced death threats, brutality, criminalisation and harassment. 

“knowing my life is in danger every day is deeply taxing. And I know I am not alone. Defenders and their communities are exposed to an ever-evolving range of reprisals, many of which are hidden from view. Or worse, ignored,” she said.

They formed part of the “Celebrating the Vaal River” event, which marked the opening of the spring and summer boating season and the celebration of the removal of the invasive aquatic weeds that had infested the sewage-polluted Vaal River Barrage Reservoir. 

“We couldn’t navigate this river literally,” said Rosemary Anderson, the managing director of Stonehaven on Vaal. “We had 400 hectares — that’s the size of a farm — of water lettuce and now it’s all gone.”

That the coverage is down to less than a hectare on the barrage made Saturday an “exceptionally happy day” for Anderson.

Anderson, the national chairperson of the Federated Hospitality Association of Southern Africa (Fedhasa), praised the community-government collaboration for the removal of the free-floating invasive species that forms dense mats on the surface, which had seen a R10 million investment by the Vaal River community. 

“We worked together with Rand Water and the DWS [department of water and sanitation], the department of forestry, fisheries and the environment and Julie Coetzee [the deputy director of the Centre for Biological Control (CBC) at Rhodes University].” 

Other partners include agrichemicals and explosives group Omnia, Save the Vaal Environment, Fedhasa and AfriForum. 

“Today is a day to celebrate and I’m hoping that this template of biocontrol, physical removal, herbicide and curtaining can be used in other water bodies that have got a similar problem [with invasive aquatic weeds],” she added. 

The weed invasion caused losses for many businesses along the barrage.

“It was really bad for aquatic life too. We have very rich water birdlife on the Vaal River that were totally decimated because they couldn’t access the areas that they had before and we had land birds that were on top of the water lettuce,” Anderson said.

The department of water and sanitation has appointed Rand Water as the official implementing agent to ensure that the barrage “never experiences what it went through earlier this year”. It has allocated R42 million over the next three years, together with a comprehensive preventative programme.

The infestation of water lettuce and water hyacinth is fuelled by high levels of polluted water in the catchment of the Vaal River. Efforts by the department to reverse this include monitoring hotspots, assisting and intervening with municipalities and taking legal action when required.

This will further be supported by an anti-pollution forum that will meet next month under the leadership of the deputy water and sanitation minister, Isaac Seitlholo, said Leslie Hoy, the project manager at Rand Water. 

“This is part of an integrated plan to revert the river and its tributaries back to a more healthy state, allow for biodiversity to be restored, for communities to enjoy and experience a cleaner environment and for business to flourish,” he said. 

“For the invasive alien species in the Vaal River Barrage, we’ve come up with a strategy to say what plants are here because there might be others,” said Anet Muir, the chief director of water use compliance and enforcement at the department. The strategy is to identify invasive aquatic species and find appropriate sustainable controls. 

Her job is to sort out the water quality for industry, mines and wastewater. And it’s not only the troubled Emfuleni local municipality that can be blamed for the sewage loads in the Vaal River. 

“It’s Mpumalanga, it’s Johannesurg, it’s Sasolburg, it’s Vanderbijlpark, it’s everywhere and that’s just the municipalities. That’s not even the industries; the mines, and agriculture and urban runoff. 

“That’s just the formalised wastewater coming in. Everything else that’s not point source [pollution] must also be sorted out,” she said.

The Centre for Biological Controls’ Coetzee said: “Today is a celebration of open water as a result of a community getting together to sort out a huge problem. I think the community did a huge amount through their removal and what-have-you, but maybe weren’t aware of all the behind-the-scenes things going on with the government and Rand Water to facilitate the process.”

Ferrial Adam, the executive manager of WaterCAN, added: “This is beautiful and we can’t help but celebrate people coming together to solve a problem.”

But she can’t help but feel a “division” in South Africa, highlighting the recent drowning of an 18-month-old in the Klip River, where initial efforts to locate the toddler’s body were stalled because the water was so polluted.

“How do we make our rivers a place of celebration across the country? I literally have to switch off my WhatsApp at night because you get picture after picture of acid mine drainage and sewage. How do we garner this kind of money and the influence that money brings but I applaud the [Vaal] community for actually getting together and doing stuff,” Adam said. 

She remains worried about the use of Kilo Max 700, a glyphosate sodium salt herbicide, to clear the invasive aquatic weeds on the Vaal. “We don’t test our water for glyphosate. Glyphosate is in our water, it’s in our food,” she said, citing research that had found traces of glyphosate in a local brand of tomato sauce. 

“Glyphosate is poisonous to our human bodies, to animal bodies, to the environment, so we have to be realistic about this. People wanted a quick fix, they wanted this thing gone from their river and they had the means to do so. On the one hand, you have to say well done to them, but we have to be mindful of the  long-term effects on the environment.” 

Hoy said that although Kilo Max contains glyphosate, its formulation “is such that it is not carcinogenic and we’ve got documents in writing [from the supply company UPL] to tell us that”.

He said spraying the herbicide would continue next year for as long as needed to control the invasive species. 

Coetzee said the quality of the water upstream needs to be remediated. “We’ve put a Band-Aid on a compound fracture. We’ve treated this explosive growth of an invasive plant but we haven’t solved the source of the problem. It’s all about water quality.” 

She said the Vaal community cleared the barrage so that boats could be sailed and people “can have a nice braai and go to a resort, but “we have to look at the ecosystem. You can’t have a non-functional aquatic system because then you lose all those benefits of this function.”

Rand Water has a preventative programme to ensure the barrage reservoir “never experiences the level of invasive aquatic weed coverage as experienced earlier this year”, Hoy said.

It is issuing requests for quotations to reduce regrowth and limit the invasive species’ spread through physical removal, chemical control and biocontrol. 

Through the support of the CBC, three community stations and one station at Rand Water have been set up to rear biological control agents such as weevils and hoppers that have been approved as host-specific feeders. Biological control will be used as a long-term, natural control mechanism that will need to be supplemented annually. 

“I am just hoping that when the plants come back, we can work on the biocontrol solution as a sustainable solution rather than spraying herbicides,” said Coetzee.  

Water lettuce and water hyacinth are likely to be a long-term problem for the barrage, Hoy said. His theory is that the more plants that are removed in the early stages, the “less chance we have of a problem late in summer”.

For her part, Anderson vowed: “We already are so ahead of the game. The moment we see it we’re going to be on it like a wet blanket.”

This key finding emerged from the latest Global Commons Survey 2024, conducted by market research group Ipsos UK and commissioned by Earth4All and the Global Commons Alliance and polled respondents in 18 G20+ countries, excluding Russia. 

The survey of 22 000 respondents, “captures growing concern” about the state of nature, awareness of planetary tipping points, and the demand for stronger environmental protections to safeguard the planet for future generations, according to Earth4All and the Global Commons Alliance.

Of the 1 000 South Africans polled, 85% of them agree that it should be a criminal offence for leaders of large businesses or senior government officials to approve or permit actions they know are likely to cause damage to nature and climate that is widespread, long-term or cannot ​be reversed.

G20 countries represent about 85% of the global GDP, 78% of greenhouse gas emissions, more than 75% of global trade, and about two-thirds of the world population. 

The organisations said the research follows recent landmark legislative changes, including in Belgium where ecocide — destruction of the natural habitat — was recognised as a federal crime earlier this year. Related laws have also been passed in Chile and France while ecocide bills have been proposed in Brazil, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru and Scotland, among others.

The survey included respondents from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, plus four countries outside the G20: Austria, Denmark, Kenya, and Sweden. 

Among the respondents, 59% are very or extremely worried about the state of nature today — a slight increase from the 2021 Global Commons Survey. In addition, 69% agree that Earth is nearing tipping points related to climate and nature because of human activities. 

The survey categorised respondents into five “planetary stewardship segments”, showing that “steady progressives”, “concerned optimists”, and “planetary stewards” groups advocating for strong action to protect the environment make up the majority (61%) of people across the G20 countries surveyed. 

“This marks a social tipping point, with more people now demanding action to protect the planet than those who do not,” the organisations said.

Gender disparities, emerging economies

Gender disparities in concern for the environment were exposed too. Sixty-two percent of women are extremely or very worried about the state of nature today, compared with 56% of men. The survey found that 74% of women believe that major action to address environmental issues should be taken within the next decade, compared with 68% of men. 

Only 25% of women believe that many claims about environmental risks are exaggerated while 33% of men do. Women are also significantly less likely to believe technology can solve environmental problems without individuals having to make big lifestyle changes (35% compared with 44% of men).  

The results showed that people in emerging economies such as India (87%), China (79%), Indonesia (79%), Kenya (73%) and Turkey (69%) feel more personally exposed to climate change compared with those in Europe and the United States. 

Those who perceive themselves as highly exposed to environmental and climate-related risks also show the highest levels of concern and urgency regarding climate action. This group is most likely to link human and planetary health and see benefits in addressing environmental issues. 

“We found that the idea of planetary stewardship is strongest in emerging economies like Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, and Kenya,” said Owen Gaffney, co-lead of the Earth4All initiative.

Findings from South Africa 

On the question of whether the government is doing enough to tackle climate change and environmental damage, only 24% of the South Africans surveyed agreed.

Meanwhile, 61% agreed that nature can meet the needs of humans right now while 54% said that nature is already too damaged to continue meeting human needs in the long-term. 

Just over half of the local respondents agreed that technology can solve environmental problems without individuals having to make changes in their lives. Seventy percent of local respondents agreed that addressing climate change and environmental damage can “bring many benefits” to South Africa. 

Seventy-seven percent agreed that because of human activities, the Earth is close to environmental tipping points where rainforests or glaciers may change suddenly or be more difficult to stabilise in the long term. A further 67% agreed that the costs of damages caused by environmental pollution are much higher than the costs of the investments needed for a green transition.

But 31% believed that many of the claims about environmental threats are exaggerated.

On the question of “thinking about climate change and protecting nature, how quickly do you think the world needs to take major action to reduce carbon emissions from electricity, transport, food, industry and buildings”, 83% of surveyed South Africans felt that action was needed within the next decade. 

Eleven percent of South Africans believed that action was needed within the next 20 to 30 years, 3% felt that action could be delayed by more than 30 years and 1% thought that no action would ever be required.

Marine seabirds can be used as indicators of plastic pollution at sea, the researchers from the University of Cape Town’s FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology said. 

“For instance, in the Northern hemisphere, fulmars [tube-nosed seabirds] breeding close to densely-populated areas contain more plastic than those breeding in remote Arctic regions,” they said. 

The findings were published in the journal Science of the Total Environment. Given the steady increase in the global production of plastics since the 1950s, the authors expected the amount of plastic in petrels to increase over time. 

Large amounts of mismanaged plastic waste have leaked into marine environments, and continue to do so. And once at sea, plastic litter may drift for years. The physical degradation of plastic items has led to tiny plastic particles becoming ubiquitous around the world, with especially high concentrations in the sea.

Seabirds frequently consume these plastic fragments directly or in their food, said Vonica Perold, a PhD student, who led the study. 

“Among seabirds, the highest ingested plastic loads typically are found in petrels, which can store plastics in their stomachs for weeks or months. Indeed, petrels were among the first organisms found to contain plastics in 1960, and since then, almost all petrel species examined have been found to contain plastic.”

Yet despite growing concern about the large amounts of waste plastic in marine ecosystems, evidence of an increase in the amount of floating plastic at sea has “been mixed”, they said. Both at-sea surveys and ingested plastic loads in seabirds show inconsistent evidence of significant increases in the amount of plastic since the 1980s. 

The study examined plastic loads in 3 727 brown skua pellets containing the remains of four petrel species. Skuas are predatory seabirds that mainly feed on other seabirds while breeding at Inaccessible Island, and regurgitate the indigestible remains of their prey – including the plastic they contain. 

This was to monitor changes in plastic loads in the four petrel species breeding at Inaccessible Island, Tristan da Cunha, in nine years from 1987 to 2018.

“The number and proportions of industrial pellets among ingested plastic decreased consistently over the study period in all four taxa, suggesting that industry initiatives to reduce pellet leakage have reduced the numbers of pellets at sea,” the study says. 

“Despite global plastic production increasing more than four-fold over the study period, there was no consistent increase in the total amount of ingested plastic in any species.” 

Perold took advantage of samples collected since 1987 by Peter Ryan, an emeritus professor at the FitzPatrick Institute and co-author of the study, who started researching the island while he was a student.

“Global plastic production increased more than four-fold over the study period, so the failure to detect an increase in the amount of plastic in petrels sampled in the same way at the same site for over 30 years is surprising,” Ryan said. 

“Our findings suggest that efforts to limit waste plastic entering the environment have been at least partly successful, reducing the proportion of plastic leaking into the sea over this period.”

When the study started, dumping of plastics at sea was still legal, and lax controls on plastic converters resulted in huge numbers of industrial pellets reaching the sea. Since then, numerous initiatives have been implemented to reduce plastic leakage and clean up plastics in the environment. 

For the seabirds in the South Atlantic, the authors found that these measures appear to have more or less balanced the increase in the amount of plastic now being produced. “Clearly there is room for even stricter controls to reduce waste plastic leakage, and in particular to reduce the amount of plastic used in single-use applications,” Ryan said.

He added that continued monitoring of plastic in seabirds will help to determine the efficacy of further efforts, including the United Nations plastic treaty that is being negotiated.

The study noted that if global plastic production was the primary driver of plastic at sea, “we would expect the density of floating plastic at sea to have increased four to six times from 1989 to 2018. 

“This is in sharp contrast to the limited change in plastic loads in petrels breeding on Inaccessible Island over this period, and in the other long-term studies. Either petrels do not track the density of floating plastic at sea, or the density of plastic in the South Atlantic Ocean has not increased in line with global plastic production.”

Growing awareness of the dangers posed by plastics in the environment over the past three decades has resulted in many interventions to reduce plastic leakage. “Together, these efforts might explain why plastic loads in seabirds (and by extension, floating at sea) have not increased as fast as the growth in plastic production.”

Their study provides further support for long-term reductions in the numbers of industrial pellets at sea, presumably at least in part from mitigation measures to reduce the leakage of pellets into the environment. 

“The lack of marked increases in plastic loads in four seabird species over 30 years, despite four to six-fold increases in global plastic production over this time, is consistent with other studies tracking the density of floating plastic at sea.”

Such long-term monitoring studies highlight the value of seabirds as sentinels of ocean health by tracking changes in plastic loads in the marine environment. “Continued monitoring of plastic pollution trends is important to assess the efficacy of intervention measures and understanding the dynamics behind the densities recorded at sea,” the study says.

Like everyone else who heard the thunderous noise on the morning of 25 August, their first reaction was: “What was that?” 

“We thought this could probably be some thunder,” said Dodd, a postdoctoral research fellow in the department of geosciences at Nelson Mandela University. “Looking up, no the clouds did not look very promising and my mom thought that maybe it’s an earth tremor.”

Back at home, Dodd checked her social media feeds and came across Jessica Botha’s post on the Snow Report SA website about meteorite fragments that had landed in her garden in Kirkwood, formerly Nqweba. A friend also forwarded her child, Zoë van der Merwe’s video of the flight of the bolide — a large exceptionally bright meteor that often explodes.

Botha’s nine-year-old daughter, Eli-zé du Toit, was sitting on her grandparents’ porch when she saw a dark rock fall from the sky and land near a wild fig tree in the garden. The rock, black and shiny on the outside with a light grey, concrete-like interior, was still warm when she picked it up. 

“When she took it to her mom, her mom thought maybe this is related to Zoe’s video, which she also saw on social media,” Dodd said. “So, she posted photos of the rocks to Snow Report SA and the rest is history.”

At 8:51am that Sunday, residents from places as far afield as the Garden Route, the Karoo, Western Cape and Free State observed a bright blue-white and orange streak of light in the sky. The meteorite, after splitting into several smaller fragments, disappeared from view. Shortly afterwards, witnesses reported hearing loud explosions and sensing vibrations.

Dodd was one of a group of scientists from the University of the Witwatersrand, Nelson Mandela University and Rhodes University who, after mounting a collaborative scientific investigation into the meteorite fall, this week unveiled the rare meteorite fragment, provisionally named the Nqweba Meteorite after the nearby town of its discovery.

Earth moves through space at a speed of 1  600 kilometres an hour. As it does, it sometimes collides with other objects in space such as meteorites, much “like a car collides with bugs on the highway”, explained Roger Gibson of the School of Geosciences at Wits University. The meteorites enter Earth’s atmosphere with a light streak, called a bolide. If large enough, the meteorites may hit Earth’s surface or will burn up in the friction from entering the atmosphere. 

“Somewhere just before 8.51am this object, which had been in space for tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years, coming from the dawn of our solar system, encountered Earth’s atmosphere and as it did so, it came in over the coastline,” said Gibson, who keeps a close watch on meteorite finds and falls in the country. 

“When you start to put it all together, the external variants are all sightings of the bolide and the bright light, but as we get closer to Gqeberha and west towards George, we find that there’s sightings, there’s also loud sound noises, sonic booms up in the air and moderately violent vibrations, you could feel the ground tremor. 

“From that, we conclude that the focus of the event was in this region between Gqeberha and George and that the body, from the eyewitness accounts, was moving towards the east-north east or north-east essentially from the coastline, moving inland.”

Bolides are one part of the spectrum of material that blitz into the atmosphere and can weigh 100 to 200 tonnes. Most are sand and pea-sized material that gets burnt up in the upper atmosphere or drifts slowly down through it 

The fragments that fall into the bolide category are typically metre-sized and heavier than a car.

“Think of [rugby player] Eben Etzebeth running into you; you’re not going to stop him. They are the lock forward of the meteor world and it’s estimated that between 10 and 50 meteorites land on the Earth’s surface every day,” Gibson said.

Two thirds of Earth’s surface is water, “so there are a lot of them sitting at the bottom of the ocean so we get excited about the few that might end up on land”.

Within two days after the event, the Centre for Near Earth Object Studies had worked out that the object was travelling at the cosmic velocity of 20km a second — or 72  000km an hour — while the energy released was equivalent to 92 tonnes of the explosive, TNT. The meteorite exploded about 38km above the Earth’s surface where it “met its match”. 

The Boshof Infrasound Array near Kimberley, which was set up to monitor missiles during the Cold War, recorded the sound of the explosion.

The object was probably the size of a motorcycle, “but we hope it was bigger. Geologists always hope stones are bigger,” Gibson quipped. 

The scientific team had so far received more than 150 eyewitnesses and “earwitness” reports. He urged the public to “keep them coming”.

Dodd, recognising the rarity and importance of Eli-ze’s find, secured the sample, while geologist Deon van Niekerk, of Rhodes University, was given permission by the Eastern Cape Provincial Heritage Resources Authority to recover all fragments from this meteor for scientific analysis.

The Nqweba Meteorite is believed to be an achondritic meteorite — a rare type in the Howardite-Eucrite-Diogenite group. It weighs less than 90g and has a pre-fragmentation diameter of about 5cm. 

The specimens have a dark black glassy coating — fusion crust — with a light grey interior peppered with dark-green and light-green grains and clasts. 

There are five fragments in total, said Van Niekerk. “It is incredible that somebody actually was at the location where these rocks fell. There might be more rocks out there that we’re going to look for but it really is a needle in a haystack.”

Leonidas Vonopartis, of Wits University’s School of Geosciences, agreed. “Having a sample, especially something with a story as it fell, and was picked up, is incredibly rare and very exciting for the South African people, international community, international scientists and South African heritage.”

The initial scientific focus will involve microscopic and geochemical analysis of the meteorite fragment to fully classify it and understand its origin. This investigation could provide insights into the meteorite’s source region in space and possibly identify its parent body. 

The hunt for more fragments will deepen. “We are working on getting permission from landowners where we are thinking that there may be some fragments,” said Dodd.

Only 51 meteorites have been documented in South Africa, and 22 meteorite falls have been recorded. As with fossils, meteorites are items of national heritage and are regulated by the South African Heritage Resources Act.

For the public, the Nqweba Meteorite is a meteorite, but for scientists, these remnants of space rock are “many different things”, Gibson said. 

“Each of these different types of meteorites plays a role in our understanding of the origins of our solar system, the formation of our Earth and possibly even our own origins as carbon-based life forms.”

Niekerk said: “You know it takes a special person to study rocks. Geologists are frequently at the brunt of jokes, but if you consider that meteorites are the only physical pieces of the world beyond our atmosphere of the universe that we can actually hold and touch, it’s really cool being able to study these rocks. They might look boring but it’s very exciting.”

The meteorite, after splitting into several smaller fragments, disappeared from view. Shortly afterwards, people reported hearing loud explosions and sensing vibrations.

This meteorite fall in the Eastern Cape sparked a collaborative scientific investigation that involved researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand, Nelson Mandela University and Rhodes University. 

They have worked around the clock to establish various facts about the meteorite, including its probable origin, size and trajectory, and speed as it entered Earth’s atmosphere as well as the possible fall area.

The results of their search for facts about the meteorite were announced at a media briefing at Nelson Mandela University on Tuesday. The rare meteorite fragment that has been recovered is provisionally named the “Nqweba Meteorite” after the nearby town of its discovery.

The incident is consistent with a rocky asteroid entering Earth’s atmosphere at very high speed, said Roger Gibson, of the Wits School of Geosciences. Friction with the atmosphere created a “spectacular fireball” and caused it to break up in flight.

Among the eyewitness accounts, the researchers credited nine-year-old Eli-zé du Toit, who was sitting on her grandparents’ porch in Nqweba when she saw a dark rock fall from the sky and land near a wild fig tree in the garden. The rock, black and shiny on the outside with a light grey, concrete-like interior, was still warm when she picked it up and showed it to her mother.

Deon van Niekerk, of Rhodes University, obtained a permit from the Eastern Cape Provincial Heritage Resources Authority to recover all fragments from this meteor for scientific analysis.

Carla Dodd, a postdoctoral research fellow in the department of geoscience at Nelson Mandela University, quickly secured the sample collected by Eli-zé, recognising the rarity and importance of such a find.

“Our response time was going to be critical if we were going to collect valuable scientific data and meteorite fragments, as well as to explain to the local public that this was a natural event and how the individual parts linked together,” Gibson noted.

Events such as these are “incredible and are very exciting”, both for the public who witness these falls and the scientists who gain invaluable information from studying the bolides and rocks, said Leonidas Vonopartis, of the Wits School of Geosciences. 

A bolide is a special type of firewall that explodes in a right terminal flash, often with fragmentation.

“There are lots more questions about the classification and origin of this rock that will be followed up through methodical science,” he said.

“Not a lot of time has passed since this event has occurred and we scientists are not very reactive creatures,” Dodd said. “We like to move slowly and especially as geologists, we are not often in a rush since we study rocks that have been around for millions of years. 

“I think it’s really significant that in less than 12 hours since the bolide was sighted and the sonic boom was heard, we already had an indication that meteorite fragments were collected and we had a semblance of the plan in place.”

The Nqweba Meteorite is believed to be an achondritic meteorite, a rare type in the Howardite-Eucrite-Diogenite group. It weighs less than 90g and has a pre-fragmentation diameter of about 5cm. 

The specimens have a dark black glassy coating (fusion crust) with a light grey interior, peppered with dark-green and light-green grains and clasts. 

Gibson said that globally, 75 000 meteorites have been collected that would fit into two passenger buses. Of these, less than one in 10 would be achondritic meteorites.

In the coming weeks, a team of researchers and astronomers affiliated with the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa will collect data from official observatories and eyewitness accounts to piece together the details of the bolide event. They will also search for more meteorite fragments.

The initial scientific focus will involve microscopic and geochemical analysis of the fragment to fully classify it and understand its origin. This investigation could provide insights into the meteorite’s source region in space and possibly identify its parent body. 

“We have received hundreds of reports from both ear witnesses and eye witnesses and we thank you for that,” Dodd added. “It’s great to have these multiple lines of evidence pointing at the same thing. This has really helped us to define the flight path as well as the strewn field where there may be other fragments.”

The long-term prognosis is not good, unless society can be mobilised towards fully reusing water and embracing the reuse of fully-treated sewage, according to water expert Craig Sheridan, writing in the latest issue of the South African Journal of Science, which is focused on discussions on service delivery.

South Africans are familiar with electricity load-shedding, which has been a part of life since 2007.

“Unfortunately, ‘shedding’ has moved beyond electric power and firmly into the domain of water supply. Gauteng, and particularly the Johannesburg metro, has started to be subjected to significant occurrences of ‘water shedding’ or intermittent water supply,” Sheridan wrote.

South Africa has engineered effective systems to reduce and prevent water insecurity. Systems of dams and inter-basin transfer schemes have been built across Southern Africa to continue supplying water to primarily Johannesburg and Gauteng. 

Sheridan, who is the Claude Leon Foundation chair in water research and the director of the Centre in Water Research and Development at the University of the Witwatersrand, noted that this strategy was highly effective at ensuring security until very recently. 

The regular occurrence of intermittent water supply in Johannesburg is a new phenomenon. As a strategy for managing water supply, it has serious negative consequences, including increasing residential capital outlay for water storage through the need for additional capacity, such as water tanks and booster pumps, causing damage to the distribution network and compromising the quality of the water, particularly with regard to its microbiological profile.

Water scarcity is defined as an excess of water demand over available supply, Sheridan said. The department of water and sanitation (DWS) ensures the country’s security, allocating water based on the population of a region and its availability in storage systems such as dams.

This allocation is sold by the department to the bulk water utility — Rand Water for Gauteng, including Johannesburg — which treats it to obtain a potable quality. It sells this fresh potable water to a number of metropolitan municipalities including Johannesburg Water as the metro entity, which then sells it onwards to consumers. 

“There is currently, however, a mismatch between what the department sells and what is needed, as the DWS is responsible for supplying both current and future needs,” Sheridan said.

South Africa, and particularly Johannesburg, is not water-scarce. This could change quite rapidly if “we were to experience a day-zero type drought” — but the city is “currently very water insecure”. 

Located on the African continental divide at an altitude of above 1 600m above mean sea level, Johannesburg has no large rivers or natural water sources and all its water is imported. To maintain water security, additional dams are being built in Lesotho as part of the Lesotho Highlands Transfer Scheme. 

“Unfortunately, the construction of these dams has been delayed by eight years. This delay coincides exactly with a period in which Gauteng grew from 12 million to 15 million people. This means that in 2023, the province had the same water storage for a population which had grown by 25%,” Sheridan wrote.

Over the past three to four years, the City of Johannesburg has increasingly supplied water intermittently to its customers. “In the summer of 2023-2024, water outages became a regular occurrence, especially for those living at higher elevations or in older suburbs in the city.”

These characteristics fit all the criteria for water insecurity, such as an excess of demand over supply. “In the older suburbs, the initial cause of these outages was primarily due to leaking water supply pipes, which were patched … During the patching process, water to the entire suburb would be shut off.” 

This temporary nature of intermittent supply has “now totally changed”, which is indicative of a larger system which is not being properly maintained. 

“When some minimal maintenance is conducted, the job is not properly completed. As a result, the roads are left with large, open excavation works, sometimes for months on end following a water repair, and the water repair often still leaks,” said Sheridan.

“This is happening across all suburbs now. While this was (and is) happening in Johannesburg, in Hammanskraal in Pretoria there was an outbreak of cholera in 2023 which claimed over 30 lives.” 

At the same time, the blue and green drop audits and reports were re-established and published. Both reports indicated that the freshwater treatment works supplying the country’s drinking water, and the wastewater treatment works treating its sewage, are increasingly dysfunctional. This is a trend seen across the entire country.

Similarly, a no-drop report revealed the amount of water which is stolen or lost through leaking pipes. For Joburg, this amount is close to 50%. “This means that the allocation of water for Gauteng, which is distributed to Johannesburg, Pretoria and other cities, is reduced by 50% (in the case of Johannesburg), because of theft and/or leakages.” 

The department will not increase the quota for Gauteng because they are the stewards or the custodians of the resource at a national level. “They are concerned with meeting both current and future needs for the entire country, not just the immediate needs of Gauteng, or Joburg. These statistics indicate that we have 50% less water for 25% more people. This extra usage and loss overloads the system entirely. The rate of drawdown on our potable water reservoirs is greater than the maximum rate of recharge.”

This discrepancy has resulted in reservoirs running empty and the City of Joburg throttling back supply during periods of high demand for reservoirs to recover, leaving many residents without water, not just for nightly periods but in some instances for weeks. For those in the highest-lying areas, the impact is the greatest. 

Then, the occurrence of load-shedding and power supply challenges means that pumping stations are often also not working. “This is the current state of water systems, especially in Johannesburg,” Sheridan wrote, noting that the blame for this poor state must be firmly placed with the administration of the city.

He said that although it is possible to live for weeks without electricity, without water, the options rapidly diminish in terms of how long people can be resilient. 

“The cost of purchasing bottled/container water is prohibitive, and yet, under these circumstances, it becomes the only available option. For those who grow food in their gardens (as happens in many poorer settlements), the cost increases exponentially because the allotment-type gardens, which contribute towards food security, are dry and barren from lack of water,” he said, noting that the poorest have to purchase not only water but additional food too. 

There is very little space left in South Africa to construct new large dams, Sheridan said. This means that water security will decline after 2028, especially if the country proceeds with current social, cultural, political and engineering practices. 

The “confounding” effect of the climate crisis also drives up water demand because temperatures are higher; it increases evaporative losses on the dams and there is an increased number of flood events from bigger storms, which “pose the very real risk of destroying infrastructure such as dams, water treatment plants and wastewater treatment plants”.

Johannesburg, in particular, notwithstanding the high rates of water lost from broken infrastructure, still uses too much water per capita —more than any other province. Changes need to be made to ensure long-term sustainability and to improve water security, he said.

Real shifts in the economics and pricing of water must occur, Sheridan said. “Much steeper tariffs can be applied to users of water that exceed their fair share … and this will undoubtedly drive consumption downwards.” 

The administrations of the country’s cities, particularly Joburg, need to urgently ring fence funding for maintenance and infrastructural improvement. 

“As a global society, we need to reconsider how we value water. Our future requires some truly creative problem-solving. We might need to consider how to bring water from the African tropics such as transfers from the Congo belt or the Zambezi.” 

Once the energy crisis is solved, the opportunity for desalination of sea or mine water for augmentation of potable supply might become a viable possibility. 

“The future, however, must include direct reclamation (sewage to potable water) as the global population moves towards 10 billion people.”

There is still a critical need to conduct additional research to understand how pathogenic organisms (including emerging pathogens and viruses) and emerging contaminants (such as pharmaceuticals and pesticides) behave in wastewater treatment plants.

“This is such that when we return the treated sewage, especially to the potable water reticulation systems, we do not harm our societies with increased exposure to these compounds at potentially harmful levels,” Sheridan said, noting that these will build up, possibly to toxic levels, if they are not removed at wastewater treatment plants. 

Significant civic education needs to take place to remove the “yuck” factor of drinking treated sewage, despite South Africans already drinking water sourced from rivers that are highly contaminated by sewage and wastewater treatment plant outfall. This is “made all the worse by our failing wastewater treatment works”.

Populations of the endemic species found in the Prince Albert region of the Western Cape have declined over the past 20 years, researchers at the South African Environmental Observation Network (Saeon), have found. Saeon is a long-term environmental observation and research facility of the National Research Foundation. 

The Prince Albert vygie (Bijlia dilatata) is listed as endangered on the Red List of South African Plants of the South African National Biodiversity Institute’s Threatened Species Programme. It is described it as a “range-restricted species occurring at three to five locations and declining due to ongoing habitat loss and degradation”. 

Details of these sites are “specifically kept vague because of the risk of plant poaching that is rife” in the Succulent Karoo region, wrote researchers Sue J Milton, an arid lands node research associate at Saeon who is based at the Wolwekraal Conservation and Research Organisation in Prince Albert, and Helga van der Merwe, an arid lands node scientist.

The researchers said their findings support predictions that warming, or the combination of drought and warming, could cause a decline in the populations of dwarf succulents such as B. dilatata.

“Although the species spans an altitudinal range of only 300m, it is likely that the higher elevation would provide a safe refuge from temperature increases associated with climate change and higher-elevation sites should be included in protected area networks,” the researchers found.

In 2002, various populations of this species were surveyed across an elevation gradient — similar to a slope — they said. Subsequent surveys were conducted in 2020 and 2021, during an intense drought period, and again in 2023 after drought-breaking rains, to assess the condition of the populations.

Bijlia dilatata population trends across various sites were investigated in terms of rainfall, elevation, microsite and land use. The researchers noted that an indication of the severity of the drought could be gained by using the Standardised Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index, which takes into account both rainfall and potential evapotranspiration determined by temperature.

“These data show that the recent drought in the Prince Albert area was particularly severe,” wrote Milton and Van der Merwe. “We found a fourfold difference in B. dilatata population density declines among sites over the two-decade study period.”

These changes were explained by elevation, with higher-elevation sites cooler than low-elevation sites and maintaining a higher relative humidity for longer after rain in shaded microsites, the researchers said. 

But other factors influencing the quality of a microsite can also influence a plant’s ability to survive an exceptionally hot and dry period, they noted. 

“Grazing intensity [no grazing, grazing or heavy grazing] was not found to significantly affect population size, however, there was a negative effect on populations. Microsite differences are affected by grazing intensity by reducing shade produced by nurse plants and therefore increasing temperature.” 

Grazing, too, can directly influence plants when parts of them are eaten by an animal or they are trampled. At all the sites, young individuals were dominant in 2002 but changed to a dominance of medium-sized individuals over time. 

Additionally, most of the dead plants were found in the smallest size class while larger individuals were more likely to survive. No recently recruiting individuals were encountered during the 2023 surveys that followed good drought-breaking rains, “therefore, recruitment failure may have also played a role in the observed population changes”. 

Recruitment refers to the process by which new plants found a population or are added to an existing population.

Possible reasons for this failure to recruit could include a depleted seed bank because of poor flowering and/or seed set before the 2023 surveys. More than half the population occurred in shaded microsites associated with rocks or live or dead nurse shrubs (nurse shrubs are larger shrubs which they rely on to survive and reproduce).

These individuals were also larger than those found in open microsites. 

“Nurse shrubs were severely impacted by the preceding drought, with 42% of these shrubs having died by the time of the 2023 survey,” they wrote, adding that this large die-off of shrubs was also reported by another study conducted in the region.

Intense grazing also removes the shrub cover that dampens heat and humidity effects.

“Declining populations of specialist succulents are further impacted by unscrupulous succulent collectors that remove them from their natural habitat,” the researchers said.

It marked the latest step in the Deadly Air court case, which was launched in 2019 by groundWork and the Vukani Environmental Justice Movement, represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), to challenge the state’s failure to enforce regulations over the dangerous levels of air pollution in the area in terms of the Air Quality Act. 

The Highveld Priority Area, spanning eastern Gauteng across the Mpumalanga Highveld, was declared a priority area in 2007. It is home to 12 of Eskom’s coal-fired power stations, Sasol’s coal-to-liquid fuels refinery and an assortment of coal-mining operations and other industries.

The groups said the regulations are essential for the implementation and enforcement of the Highveld Priority Area air quality management plan. The plan has proven ineffective for years in addressing the toxic air quality in the region.

In March 2022, the Pretoria high court delivered a landmark ruling that the poor air quality in the Highveld Priority Area is in breach of residents’ section 24(a) constitutional right to an environment that is not harmful to their health and well-being. 

The judgment declared that section 24 of the Constitution is immediately realisable — as opposed to a progressive obligation — and that the state’s inaction was infringing upon it. It ordered the government to pass regulations to implement and enforce the HPA air quality management plan.

The court found that Barbara Creecy, the former minister of forestry, fisheries and the environment, had a legal duty to pass these regulations, and had “unreasonably delayed” in preparing and initiating regulations to give effect to the Highveld Plan.

In terms of section 20 of the Air Quality Act, the minister or provincial MEC may prescribe regulations necessary for implementing and enforcing approved priority area air quality management plans. But the court held that, in the context, “may” effectively means “must”. Creecy appealed this technical but significant point.

In their oral submissions this week, groundWork and the Vukani Environmental Justice Movement argued that there is both a legal duty and compelling contextual factors that make the publishing of these regulations obligatory, and not a discretion.

 The current environment minister, Dion George, argued that there are two possible consequences of “may” becoming “must”. 

“If the ‘may’ in section 20 is interpreted as creating an obligation, the result is that the principle of separation of powers will be undermined, but if it is interpreted to be empowering and permissive, affording the minister or MEC a discretion, the principle will be upheld. The latter interpretation should be preferred. The second interpretation is capable of a meaning that upholds a constitutional principle.” 

It emerged in Wednesday’s hearing that George published the regulations just two days before the hearing. But all the parties agreed that this does not render the case moot, or of no consequence, because important considerations of obligations versus discretion still need to be decided on. 

The Vukani Environmental Justice Movement and groundWork said they are studying these regulations to determine if they are adequate. “Should these regulations fall short, they may be vulnerable to legal challenge.”

According to the department of forestry, fisheries and the environment, the regulations set out the requirements needed for implementing and enforcing any approved priority area air quality management plans. These are plans constituted to bring priority areas into compliance with national ambient air quality standards.

“The regulations provide for mandatory implementation of targeted emission reduction and management interventions; mechanisms for the government to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions as well as enforcement measures where non-compliance is identified,” it said.

The minister’s appeal is on fairly narrow grounds, said Brandon Abdinor, a climate advocacy lawyer at the CER. 

“In similar situations, we would want to see similar decisions being taken or the state taking the same approach where they know they need to do what they are supposed to do. Where if we leave it in the realm of ‘may’, it just leaves a lot of space for inaction.” 

A key theme at the heart of this court case has been the need for accountability from government departments and polluters and effective mechanisms to ensure that the Highveld plan is properly enforced, said groundWork’s Thomas Mnguni. 

“It is not acceptable for government officials to tell pollution-trapped communities that they care; this judgment tells us that the government needs to rather lead through their actions and, where there is failure, such as this case, government officials must be held responsible,” he said.

This latest development in the case comes at a critical time when legal air pollution protection is under severe threat, the groups said. A series of decisions by Creecy and George have resulted in exemptions being granted to Eskom, Sasol and steelmaker ArcelorMittal. 

“These major polluters sought and were granted suspensions of compliance with the minimum emissions standards, which are intended to control and minimise the levels of various toxic pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter.

“These three emitters, along with others, were aware of the progressive need to clean up their act, but failed to do so, and the state is effectively being complicit in the ongoing sacrifice of the lives, health and wellbeing of millions of people who live in the vicinity of the pollution sources,” the groups said.

Ntombi Maphosa, an attorney at the CER, said this matter is being discussed before the supreme court of appeal at a crucial time in South Africa’s air pollution management journey. 

“Current minister, Dion George and his predecessor, Barbara Creecy, have recently granted postponements of compliance with the minimum emissions standards to the country’s heaviest polluters. 

“This is contrary to the intention of the Air Quality Act and limits a range of constitutional rights,” Maphosa said. “The costs on health, the wellbeing of local communities, and the economy as a whole are devastating. And over and above this, thousands of people die as a result every year.” 

Health effects from air pollution include lung cancer, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, strokes, lower respiratory infections and asthma.

Abdinor said: “Keeping the overall decision in the Deadly Air case alive can be used by us to motivate why those exemptions should not be granted or there should be stricter conditions. 

“The Deadly Air case was a really important one to win just so those rights are in fact recognised via a court, but to make meaningful change on the ground, there’s steps in between so we can use that victory to keep the pressure on.”

Judgment by the five-judge bench of appeal court judges was reserved.