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enviroadmin
Forum Admin
2482 Posts |
 Posted - 22 Nov 2008 : 13:39:06
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The appended document, entitled “Keynote Address CSIR 2008” was intended for public presentation at a high profile conference yesterday. It was noted with serious concern that the keynote address was not delivered and the keynote speaker, Dr. Anthony Turton, a person of elevated moral character was not present at the conference. It is assumed that he was prohibited from addressing the conference. The information in the document is, however in the public domain. Dr. Turton’s recommendations regarding a national water quality programme, with the focus on AMD and the health implications, have the full support of the South African public and NGOs . It will be much regretted if there is a deliberate attempt to silence and discredit him.
Sincerely yours,
Mariette Liefferink.
NOTE: Click here to sign the petition against Dr Turton's suspension
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enviroadmin
Forum Admin
2482 Posts |
Posted - 22 Nov 2008 : 15:29:49
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Dear Ms. September
Permit me please to once more speak freely (and hoped to be pardoned for my forwardness), and to solicit you to exert your lawful prerogative to assist us in recalling a trust which we find has been scandalously abused. You have an honourable part to act. I here specifically allude to Constitutional Right of freedom of speech, the dissemination of information and the right of access to information# that is required for the exercise and protection of the right to access to sufficient water, the right to life, and the right to an environment that is not harmful to health and well-being.
#(We are of the respectful opinion that this is a perpetuation of the system of government in South Africa before 27 April 1994, which resulted in a secretive and unresponsive culture in public and private bodies which often led to an abuse of power and human rights violations.)
I refer to my previous correspondence*. The relevancy of this matter to your area of expertise and experience, is the fact that the matter pertains to the historic and current, and foreseeable non-internalisation of negative externalities, particularly regarding water pollution, and the suppression of the findings and recommendation of a high confidence and independent scientific Report in this regard and the subsequent suspension of the author, a person of impeccable credentials and international status. We are inclined to form sanguine hopes from the natural and historic benevolence of your disposition, particularly with reference to the invasion of the constitutional rights of the people on which all civil and political liberties depend, and therefore beg of you please not to pass the matter over. Versed as you undoubtedly are in the South African history, it cannot easily escape you how much it is in our country’s interest, as well as your duty, to prevent unconstitutional decisions and actions from encroaching upon independent, high confidence scientific research and dissemination of the findings and recommendations of scientific reports. When decisions and actions of scientific bodies, such as the CSIR, depart from the great constitutional line by which all proceedings should be directed, who will answer for its future moderation?
(*The appended document, entitled “Keynote Address CSIR 2008” was intended for public presentation at a high profile conference yesterday. It was noted with serious concern that the keynote address was not delivered and the keynote speaker, Dr. Anthony Turton, a person of elevated moral character was not present at the conference. It is assumed that he was prohibited from addressing the conference. The information in the document is, however in the public domain. Dr. Turton’s recommendations regarding a national water quality programme, with the focus on AMD and the health implications, have the full support of the South African public and NGOs . It will be much regretted if there is a deliberate attempt to silence and discredit him.)
DR. ANTHONY TURTON WAS SUSPENDED WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT FROM THE CSIR ON FRIDAY, THE 21ST OF NOVEMBER, 2008 AND HE HAS BEEN INSTRUCTED TO VACATE THE PREMISES. THE REASON FOR THE SUSPENSION WAS FOR ALLEGEDLY BRINGING THE CSIR INTO DISREPUTE THROUGH HIS WRITING AND FOR FAILING TO OBEY A LAWFUL INSTRUCTION. It is our respectful opinion that Dr. Turton, because of the earnestness of his zeal, suffered unwarrantable insinuations and actions against him.
I append hereto the letter of support on behalf of relevant NGOs and civil society groups and relevant news paper reports. I rest confident you will draw the correct inference.
Sincerely yours,
Mariette Liefferink.
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enviroadmin
Forum Admin
2482 Posts |
Posted - 22 Nov 2008 : 15:30:09
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THIS IS A NATIONAL DISGRACE AND SHOULD BE THE SUBJECT OF A JUDICIAL COMMISSION OF INQUIRY !!!
Thanks to Melanie Gosling of the Cape Times for doing her duty as a first-rate journalist !!!
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has prevented one of its scientists from delivering the keynote address at its conference in Pretoria.
Dr Anthony Turton, of the CSIR's natural resource and environment unit, was to deliver a 19-page address on water quality, entitled A Clean South Africa, as the keynote address in the CSIR's Science Real and Relevant conference on Tuesday.
On Monday, Turton was told he could not give the address.
"I was told it had been pulled, and I was instructed not to be on the premises. I was given three different reasons by three different people," Turton said.
Asked to comment, the CSIR said it acknowledged South Africa's water quality problems were of national importance and it had invested "significant resources" to address them.
Turton's address was withdrawn because certain statements "could not be sufficiently substantiated", and because he had shown burning victims, which could offend sensitive people.
The CSIR allowed the paper to be included "as part of the conference proceedings".
Turton had included images of xenophobic violence in the paper with the caption asking if "this type of anger could be unleashed in response to perceptions of deteriorating public health as a result of declining water quality?"
Turton said he offered to make changes to his paper, but this was turned down.
"This is an academic environment where freedom of thought is encouraged. The paper had the normal peer-review process. It was extensively circulated before the conference," he said.
Turton's paper asked what role the CSIR should play in South Africa's young democracy. The answer lay in understanding three fundamental facts which affected the social and economic wellbeing of the country.
"(These fundamental facts) are so powerful that if we fail to recognise them, then all of our efforts at solution-seeking will amount to naught," he wrote.
One was that South Africa had no more water supplies and all economic development would be constrained by this.
The second was that all major centres of economic development were on watershed divides. This took major engineering technology to mobilise water that cities needed, and liquid waste effluent from the cities degraded water quality.
This was a major threat to economic development.
Third, South Africa's historic legacy was based on violence and disrespect for human rights, and the country's science was embedded in this legacy.
Turton's paper said the demand for technical ingenuity far outweighed the supply. This affected the country's ability to solve pressing scientific problems.
A reason was that funding was from private contracts, not the government, exposing the CSIR to the risk of being "hijacked by private interests".
"We cannot allow this to happen, because (it would erode) science, engineering and technical capacity."
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enviroadmin
Forum Admin
2482 Posts |
Posted - 22 Nov 2008 : 15:30:27
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SUBMISSION BY NGO AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN SUPPORT OF DR. ANTHONY TURTON
Reference is hereby made to the CSIR Report No. CSIR/NRE/WR/EXP/2008/0160/A entitled, “Three Strategic Water Quality Challenges that Decision-Makers Need to Know About and How the CSIR Should Respond”, which was intended to be delivered as the Keynote Address at “A Clean South Africa” CSIR “Science Real and Relevant” Conference on the 18 November 2008, by Dr. Anthony Turton, a Natural Resource and Environment Unit Fellow.
We furthermore refer to the front page of the Cape Times, dated the 20th of November, 2008, and Beeld, dated the 21st November, 2008 which featured the suppression of Dr. Turton’s key note address.
Pursuant to the suppression of the said Report, we, as representatives of NGOs and Civil Society respond as follows:
Up to the present, scientists have only interpreted the state of our water resources and environment in South Africa, it is also necessary to change it. If our scientists use their knowledge to concoct ingenious excuses to defend the poor management of our scarce water resources and colonial exploitation of historically disadvantaged communities, science will fail to address mankind’s common needs, namely the need to an environment that is not harmful to health and well-being, and sufficient water. By analogous reasoning: If scientists devote their ingenuity to making or condoning toxic and radioactive dust fallout to suffocate the inhabitants of great cities or consent to spread toxic and radioactive heavy metals to infect the reservoirs and stock of populations, the survivors of our civilization will declare that our science has exacted too high a price for its benefits. Similarly, if scientific organisations condone the pollution of our scarce water resources, science and civilization will, if not perish together, suffer a heavy setback for many years to come.
We are of the firm opinion that Dr. Turton’s key note address was intended for the large and growing number of concerned members of civil society who realize that the impact of science on society is now the focus of genuinely constructive social effort to change the management of our scarce water resources. It is also believed that Dr. Turton’s paper was intended for large and growing number of adolescents, who realize that they will be the first victims of our loss of dilution capacity caused by the over-allocation of national water resources, our unique pattern of spatial development, and our historic legacy of non-internalised externalities.
In the Victorian age big men of science like Faraday, T.H. Huxley, and Tyndall did not think it beneath their dignity to write about simple truths with the conviction that they could instruct their audiences. There were giants in those days. The key to the eloquent paper which the pen of Dr. Anthony Turton produced is his firm faith in the educability of the ordinary man in the street and that science ought to be applied in the service of society. The value of his paper, entitled “Three Strategic Water Quality Challenges that Decision-Makers Need to Know About and How the CSIR Should Respond”, has been ill-conceived by certain members of the CSIR who have scarcely begun to see how science might be used for the satisfaction of human needs. We, however, as representatives of NGOs and civil society groups hail Dr. Anthony Turton as a present day giant.
Dr. Anthony Turton has always acted with integrity. We have knowledge that he belongs to the Pugwash Movement, created by Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell, to act as the moral conscience of all scientists. That is an invitation-only organization
It is publicly known that Dr. Turton has laboured hard and long for the noble and laudable objective, namely science in the service of society. The vilification of a person with such a vision and mission is highly censurable and lamentable.
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enviroadmin
Forum Admin
2482 Posts |
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CSIR - Suppression of Report on Water
