AMSA - ArcelorMittal South Africa

CER - The Centre for Environmental Rights

VEJA - Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance

The Centre for Environmental Rights (CER) is a non-profit company and law clinic based in Cape Town. Established in October 2009 by eight civil society organisations (CSOs) in South Africa’s environmental and environmental justice sector, the CER provides legal and related support to environmental CSOs and communities.

This collection relates to CER's work in promoting transparency and accountability in environmental governance, aimed at testing and assessing the extent to which civil society can access environmental information held by regulators and private entities.

Many of the records included in this collection were released to CER and / or CER partner organisations in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act, 2000 (PAIA), such as the Vanderbijlpark Environmental Master Plan, developed by ISCOR from 2000 to 2002 and released by ArcelorMittal South Africa (AMSA) to the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance (VEJA) in 2014 after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) ordered AMSA to do so. The SCA judgment confirmed VEJA’s constitutional right to know the extent and impact of the steel giant’s activities on the Vaal communities’ health and the environment.

The aim of this collection is to establish a proper archive for CER’s third party documents and the next series of documents will include Eskom licences, compliance reports and health studies.