Hydraulic Fracturing in the Karoo: Critical Legal and Environmental Perspectives

Abstract

<p>The threat of climate change demands a major energy transition.¹ However, a clear pathway from fossil fuels to clean energy has been slow to materialise.² One of the more prominent, yet contested, routes for facilitating a conversion to clean energy involves the use of so called bridging fuels, such as unconventional gas.</p> <p>Driven by advances in supply-side technologies, unconventional gases, such as shale gas and coal seam gas, are now considered a "global phenomenon".³ As with other bridging fuels, their promotion and commodification rests on a claim that no single energy source can ensure accessible, reliable, and affordable energy, while also slowing the emissions lock-in of new coal power.⁴ Given this, unconventional gas is said to provide a less carbon-intensive fuel source (relative to other fossil fuels), while still being abundant and feasible to access.⁵ Yet, the growth of unconventional gas has been met with numerous concerns about its environmental, social and climate impacts, including risks of high methane emissions, changes in land use and "place", subsidence, water pollution and reduced water availability.⁶ These risks have prompted community concern and conflict, raising questions about whether unconventional gas can deliver secure energy without jeopardising the environment, other water users, climate change and future generations.⁷ Responding to these concerns, governments at different levels have pursued a raft of inquiries, moratoriums, planning, entitlement and management regimes for unconventional gas.⁸ In so doing, they are participating in the governance process as important laboratories of what works and what does not in governing the challenges of unconventional gas.⁹ And it is precisely from these living laboratories that scholars are beginning to develop a more systematic understanding of the nature and challenges of unconventional gas, from which we can learn and diffuse innovations for how best to govern this energy source and attend to the broader interdependences between environmental sustainability, energy security and energy equity. ¹⁰ </p> <p>One governance laboratory of great interest to other nations is the Karoo Basin in South Africa. The Karoo Basin spans more than 400 000 square kilometres and is a site that has been under consideration for developing unconventional gas to add to South Africa's energy mix.¹¹ The possibility of "fracking" in the region has provoked heated debate and it is in this area that is the focus of Glazewski's and Esterhuyse's timely and unique book, <i>Hydraulic Fracturing in the Karoo: Critical Legal and Environmental Perspectives.</i>¹²</p>