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Abstract
After 100 years of academic Geography in South Africa, the emerging field of Environmental Assessment (EA) has occupied an important position vis-a-vis Geography. In this paper the contribution of Geography to practice and research in EA is investigated for South Africa. Firstly, Geography core competences are compared to the requirements for training Environmental Assessment practitioners, followed by reflection of the utility of Geography competences for Environmental Assessment research. It is evident that Geography competences are fundamental to EA practice, that EA skills are taught in some Geography curricula, and that the greater part of published EA research is produced by Geographers. We conclude that Geography as a discipline has embraced the environmental sustainability challenges by engaging actively in EA training and research.
Notes
1. In this paper, EA is used in its broadest sense to refer to a suite of EA tools focused on the consequences of actions and/or for sustainability. These include specialist forms of EA such as social impact assessment (SIA) and health impact assessment (HIA) as well as strategic level tools such as strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and SA (Morgan, Citation2012; Pope et al., Citation2013; Retief, Citation2010).
2. The word competence has been used instead of skill to reflect the philosophical underpinning of applied competence in the National Qualifications Framework, and the wider scope of competence. ‘Applied competence has three constituent elements: foundational competence embraces the intellectual/academic skills of knowledge together with analysis, synthesis and evaluation, which includes information processing and problem solving; practical competence includes the concept of operational context; and reflexive competence incorporates learner autonomy’ (South Africa Qualifications Authority [SAQA], Citation2012, p. 3).
3. EAPASA: Environmental Assessment Practitioners Association of South Africa.