Protecting environment a critical need
Enabling socio-economic development
Marco RaffinettiNamibia is one of the few countries in the world where the protection of the environment is enshrined in its highest law, the Constitution.
This clear indicator demonstrates how seriously the Namibian government takes the preservation of its natural environment.
Article 95 (l) of Namibia’s Constitution provides the basis for environmental protection, guiding and formulating policies, legislation and programmes that aim to preserve and maintain biodiversity and ecosystems while sustainably using Namibia’s natural resources for the benefit of all Namibians—now and in the future.
Socio-economic development
The government’s responsibilities extend beyond preserving the environment.
It must also enable Namibia’s socio-economic development by growing the economy and establishing new industries to create positive change and opportunities for its people.
Despite significant progress since independence in 1990, Namibia remains the second most unequal society in the world in terms of wealth and income distribution.
The government recognises the need to accelerate economic growth to address these inequalities through the Harambee Prosperity Plan II (HPPII), the 6th National Development Plan (NDP6) and Vision 2030.
HPPII aims to leverage Namibia’s exceptional renewable energy resources to drive green industrial development, including supplying green hydrogen and its derivatives to global markets to help decarbonise countries worldwide.
NDP6, covering the final five-year stretch to Vision 2030, will further support green hydrogen sector development ambitions.
As part of this strategy, the government has tendered two sites within the Tsau //Khaeb (formerly Sperrgebiet) National Park (TKNP) in the //Kharas Region for large-scale green hydrogen projects.
Balance
My company, Hyphen, intends to contribute by developing Namibia’s first large-scale green hydrogen-to-ammonia project, subject to necessary environmental and other approvals.
Hyphen’s green hydrogen project aims to help the world decarbonise by cutting 5-6 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year while creating opportunities for green industrialisation in Namibia.
However, the development of a green hydrogen economic sector and the global drive to net zero must not come at the expense of TKNP’s ecosystems and biodiversity.
For Namibia to grow, we must balance environmental protection with economic development.
Footprint
For those who haven’t visited Namibia, the TKNP, or our project site, it’s hard to imagine the sheer scale of the country, which is the 35th largest and second least densely populated in the world, with a surface area of 824 000 km², much of which is arid and uninhabited with varied levels of biodiversity sensitivity.
Almost half of the country is under some form of conservation management—an area bigger than Germany, Europe’s fourth largest country.
National parks account for just under half of Namibia’s protected land, with TKNP representing 15%.
In comparison, the maximum physical footprint of Hyphen’s project within TKNP is anticipated to be less than 0.7%.
Hyphen has significant flexibility in designing the project to avoid the most sensitive areas.
Key principle
Impact avoidance is a key principle guiding the design of the Hyphen project.
Based on the current Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism’s TKNP management plan, which classifies the park by biodiversity sensitivity, about 90% of the project’s footprint would be within the lowest sensitivity land category.
Any work on sites where avoidance of important biodiversity is impossible will be carried out with the utmost care, guided by a bespoke Biodiversity Action Plan that specifies strict impact mitigation measures, including effectiveness monitoring and adaptive management.
Committed
From the inception of Hyphen’s project, we have recognised the uniqueness of the TKNP’s ecosystems and the need to design our project in harmony with these systems.
Hyphen is committed to developing the project not only per Namibia’s constitution and environmental legislation but also to the highest international standards, notably the International Finance Corporation’s Performance Standard 6 on Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Management of Living Natural Resources, widely recognised as the benchmark for global best practices.
Hyphen has recruited a team of environmental specialists and enlisted an external team of Namibia’s and Africa’s most experienced and knowledgeable environmental experts to advise and carry out studies on the most environmentally responsible ways to develop the project.
Hyphen has appointed global environmental consulting firm SLR as its environmental practitioner to guide the project through the process.
Process
Namibia’s legislated environmental process entails carrying out an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA), which can be divided into three phases: screening, scoping, and impact assessment.
To date, Hyphen has conducted screening work and fieldwork aimed at improving its understanding of the environmental baseline and planning for the scoping and impact assessment phases.
This significant early-phase ESIA work is due to the recognition that a “normal” ESIA approach would be inadequate given the scale and complexity of the project and the sensitivity of the environment.
The early baseline work included extensive ecological fieldwork to help Hyphen design the ESIA process and inform project design to avoid the most sensitive areas in TKNP, such as rocky outcrops (including inselbergs) where biodiversity tends to cluster.
We intend to follow an approach where environmental sensitivity guides the placement of infrastructure, with solar generation infrastructure—having the largest land requirement—located in areas of least or lesser importance for conservation.
‘Enormous responsibility’
We firmly believe that avoidance is the first step in reducing the project’s environmental impact to an absolute minimum.
After the formal commencement of the ESIA process in the coming weeks, we will seek feedback from local communities and environmental groups, building on the environmental stakeholder roadshows Hyphen has hosted since early 2022.
Hyphen has also engaged stakeholders on the socio-economic and development impacts of the project by publishing notices and news stories in newspapers and online.
Hyphen has held roadshows and workshops across the country, covering nine of Namibia’s 14 regions to date.
Working closely with the government and other key stakeholders, Hyphen has an enormous responsibility to protect one of Namibia’s precious national parks while enabling the country’s continued economic growth through the development of its first large-scale green hydrogen project.
Benchmark model
Hyphen’s goal is to establish the benchmark model for sustainable and equitable development not only in Namibia but across the African continent.
This challenge is critical and not unique to Namibia.
As the world strives toward net zero to ensure a future for coming generations, the global collective challenge is to achieve this goal without compromising environmental preservation or sacrificing sustainable economic development.
I speak for the whole Hyphen team when I say we want to work with all stakeholders who value environmental preservation.
We look forward to engaging with people and organisations locally, nationally, and internationally to develop our project and ensure progress while prioritising the environment in every decision we make. Marco Raffinetti