On 22 September 2026, the Portfolio Committee on Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment reviewed its performance for the 2025/26 financial year and formally adopted its 2026/27 Annual Performance Plan (APP), reaffirming its commitment to strengthening oversight, accountability and public participation in advancing South Africa’s environmental rights and sustainable development agenda. The Committee’s own 2026/27 APP sits alongside, and is designed to hold to account, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment’s (DFFE) own Annual Performance Plan for the same period, which sets out the Department’s programme-level targets across compliance monitoring, environmental law enforcement, climate change, biodiversity, oceans and forestry.

For entities operating in regulated sectors, mining houses, industrial emitters, waste licence holders, fishing and forestry operators, and developers of listed activities, among others, an intensified parliamentary oversight cycle of this kind is not merely administrative theatre. It is a direct signal of where compliance, monitoring and enforcement attention is likely to be directed over the year ahead, and a useful early warning of the legislative and regulatory developments most likely to affect them.

The 2025/26 Year In Review

The Committee reported that it achieved nine of its eleven planned targets during the 2025/26 financial year, and exceeded its own annual meeting target, convening 29 meetings against a planned minimum of 20. It described oversight and accountability as its strongest area of performance, reflecting Parliament’s role in ensuring that DFFE and its public entities remain responsive and accountable.

The Committee’s oversight work was credited with contributing to several developments over the year, including improved audit outcomes across DFFE and its entities, enhanced implementation of environmental programmes, progress in addressing human-wildlife conflict (including interventions relating to the Mawana elephants), improved operations at state nurseries, declining rhino poaching levels, strengthened community beneficiation initiatives linked to conservation areas, and positive trends in visitor numbers and revenue generation within national parks, botanical gardens and other conservation institutions.

Notwithstanding these gains, the Committee was candid that South Africa continues to face significant and, in places, worsening environmental challenges. It specifically flagged deteriorating air quality in pollution hotspots, climate change impacts, weak waste management systems, biodiversity loss, invasive species, habitat degradation, underperforming forestry resources, and delays in implementing strategic programmes such as the Oceans Economy Master Plan. Critically, the Committee acknowledged that improvements in governance and administration have not always translated into measurable environmental outcomes or an improved quality of life for citizens, a distinction with real legal significance given that section 24 of the Constitution guarantees an outcome, an environment not harmful to health and wellbeing, not merely a compliant administrative process.

The Legal Framework Underpinning The Committee’s Oversight Mandate

Parliamentary oversight of environmental governance in South Africa does not exist as a matter of policy preference; it is constitutionally and legislatively mandated, and rests on several intersecting legal foundations –

• Section 24 of the Constitution – guarantees every person the right to an environment that is not harmful to their health or wellbeing, and to have the environment protected through reasonable legislative and other measures. The Committee’s stated commitment to the “realisation” of section 24 frames its entire oversight programme as an exercise in holding the executive to a constitutional, and not merely a policy, standard;
• Section 55 of the Constitution and the Committee’s accountability function – empowers the National Assembly, through its committees, to maintain oversight of the exercise of national executive authority, including any organ of state, and obliges Parliament to provide mechanisms to ensure that all executive organs of state are accountable to it;
• The National Environmental Management Act 107 of 1998 (NEMA) – establishes the environmental management principles, compliance and enforcement architecture (including Environmental Management Inspectors) that DFFE’s own APP targets are designed to give effect to, and against which the Committee’s enforcement-related oversight priorities will be measured;
• Sector-specific legislation – including the National Environmental Management: Air Quality Act 39 of 2004, the National Environmental Management: Waste Act 59 of 2008, the National Water Act 36 of 1998, the National Veld and Forest Fire Act 101 of 1998, and the Marine Living Resources Act 18 of 1998, each of which assigns DFFE and its entities specific statutory monitoring, licensing and enforcement functions that fall within the scope of the Committee’s oversight; and
• The Climate Change Act 22 of 2024 – now firmly part of the legislative landscape the Committee is required to monitor, given its explicit commitment to overseeing climate finance commitments and climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives during 2026/27.

Persistent Coordination Challenges Across Spheres Of Government

A recurring theme in the Committee’s statement is that environmental governance cannot be achieved by DFFE in isolation. It noted persistent coordination challenges between national departments, provinces, municipalities and public entities, which continue to undermine effective implementation, and confirmed that strengthening intergovernmental collaboration will remain a central focus of its oversight programme.

This is a familiar legal fault line. Environmental competence in South Africa is a functional area of concurrent national and provincial legislative competence under Schedule 4 of the Constitution, with implementation and enforcement often devolved further still to municipalities through their air quality, waste and land use planning functions. Where compliance obligations span more than one sphere of government, whether an environmental authorisation implemented through a municipal building process, or air quality monitoring shared between a national framework and metropolitan by-laws, regulated entities frequently find themselves navigating inconsistent timelines, duplicated requirements or, at worst, conflicting directives. The Committee’s renewed focus on intergovernmental coordination is a welcome acknowledgement of a problem regulated entities have long had to manage as a practical compliance risk.

The Committee’s Stated 2026/27 Oversight Priorities

Looking ahead, the Committee’s APP identifies the following as key oversight priorities for the year, several of which carry direct compliance implications for regulated entities –

• Air quality monitoring and environmental law enforcement – identified as a first-order priority, signalling likely intensified scrutiny of compliance with air emission licences and enforcement action in known pollution hotspots such as the Vaal Triangle and Highveld priority areas;
• Climate change mitigation, adaptation and climate finance oversight – reflecting the Committee’s intention to monitor implementation of the Climate Change Act and associated carbon budgeting and sectoral emission target mechanisms, together with the flow of climate finance commitments;
• Sustainable forestry and fisheries development – continuing oversight of licensing, quota allocation and resource sustainability under the National Forests Act 84 of 1998 and the Marine Living Resources Act;
• Biodiversity conservation and Operation Phakisa implementation – monitoring progress within the oceans, biodiversity and waste economy sectors, an area the Committee has specifically flagged as lagging in respect of the Oceans Economy Master Plan;
• Waste management and pollution control – with particular attention to addressing environmental pollution and improving waste management systems, an implicit acknowledgement of continuing non-compliance risk under NEMWA;
• Fire protection associations and natural resource management – supporting the establishment and functionality of fire protection associations under the National Veld and Forest Fire Act, and sustainable management of natural resources more broadly; and
• Monitoring of international environmental agreements – including South Africa’s obligations under instruments dealing with climate change, biodiversity and sustainable development, an area of increasing relevance as international disclosure and due diligence expectations filter down to domestic operators.

What This Means For Regulated Entities

An APP of this kind is, in substance, a statement of where Parliament expects DFFE to direct its finite compliance and enforcement resources over the year ahead, and the following implications are worth noting –

• Enforcement in pollution hotspots is likely to intensify – entities holding atmospheric emission licences in declared priority areas should expect closer scrutiny of compliance with licence conditions and emission limits, consistent with the Committee’s stated first-order priority on air quality and enforcement;
• Climate-related compliance obligations will move from policy to enforcement – with the Climate Change Act now operational and climate finance oversight explicitly on the Committee’s agenda, entities subject to carbon budgets or sectoral emission targets should anticipate closer parliamentary, and consequently departmental, attention to compliance rather than aspirational reporting;
• Coordination failures remain a compliance risk, not just an administrative inconvenience – entities operating across provincial or municipal boundaries should continue to build in contingency for inconsistent regulatory timelines while intergovernmental coordination challenges persist, notwithstanding the Committee’s stated intention to address them;
• Waste and pollution non-compliance will remain firmly in view – the Committee’s own acknowledgement of weak waste management systems suggests continued, rather than diminishing, regulatory and enforcement focus on this sector; and
• Outcome, not process, is now the yardstick – the Committee’s explicit distinction between improved governance administration and measurable environmental outcomes signals that compliance frameworks which are merely procedurally sound, without demonstrable environmental benefit, may increasingly be regarded as inadequate, both by the regulator and, ultimately, by reviewing courts applying section 24 of the Constitution.

How Bishop Fraser Attorneys Can Assist

The Committee’s adoption of its 2026/27 Annual Performance Plan, read together with DFFE’s own APP for the year, offers regulated entities a valuable, and unusually candid, early indication of where environmental compliance and enforcement attention is likely to be concentrated over the coming financial year.

Bishop Fraser Attorneys advises clients on compliance with the full range of national environmental legislation administered by DFFE, engagement with environmental law enforcement processes and compliance notices, air quality licensing and Highveld and Vaal Triangle priority area compliance, and climate change regulatory obligations under the Climate Change Act. We are well placed to help clients anticipate and prepare for the intensified oversight and enforcement environment the Committee has signalled for 2026/27, rather than responding to it only once a compliance notice or enforcement action has already been issued.