Speech for Nicola's Wedding

I spent a lot of my working life presenting Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) in local halls in small towns to groups of people known as Interested and Affected Parties or (IAPs). Typically I had to explain to the people why they should be overjoyed that someone wanted to build a very large steelworks in their little town. So today I am going to assess the environmental impact of Nicola and Pieter marrying and settling in Middelburg. I think this is appropriate for several reasons. Firstly Middelburg is definitely a small town, it was built in 1849 because it was halfway between the important towns of Pretoria and Lydenburg. When a town's reason to exist is because it is halfway between two important towns it is a small town! A quick look at the Internet shows that Middelburg is still a small town, one site says that Middelburg “has a vibrant night-life, 25 kilometers away in Witbank!”

The halls where these meetings happen are places that all of us would recognize, especially Nicola and Rhona, everything important happens here, the yoga classes, the cat show, the election voting, the amateur dramatics. The curtain at the back of the stage has jammed ever since a cable snapped, Cinderella's coach can be seen sticking out, waiting for the white mice. Today we are all “Interested and Affected Parties” who will be affected by a great development project, the wedding of Nicola and Pieter.

At EIA meetings there is always an opposition group who do not want anything to change, usually they are led by a retired district nurse whose husband stands at the door of the hall giving out pamphlets that show the town, say Middelburg, under a cloud of pollution while a skeleton stands at the factory gate with a poster saying NO TO COLUMBUS. These nurses can be fierce opponents, one of their main points is that the factory will attract strange new people, like young women with metallurgy degrees. These women are just the thin edge of the wedge, they will be followed by young men testing drugs! Matters may expand unpredictably.

The group who support the factory is usually led by the mayor who has bought two strategic farms and hopes to make a killing by selling them to the developers. The nurse , who brought the mayor into this world and never liked him, knows about the farms and plans to tell the Mail & Guardian. The factory already has their own land so the mayor becomes an estate agent and sells houses to all the strangers, like Nicola and Pieter, who come to Middelberg, so everyone is happy. EIAs refer to “Green-fields” and “Brown-fields” developments.” Green-fields” means that you take a piece of veld, plough it up and chase all the birds away before building on it, but even birders have to live somewhere! “ Brown-fields” means that someone else chased the birds away and built on it, it also means that they anchored the windy-drier to a huge piece of concrete in the wrong part of the garden so Pieter will have to dig it up and move it.

An important part of an EIA is the topic of “Mitigation”, that is what can be done to make the skeleton at the gate of the factory feel better about the project, in this case the wedding of Nicola and Pieter. To show their good intentions Nicola and Pieter have tried to make it up to the birds that were chased away to build their house, they have already installed two bird feeders and a sisal log for the barbets. I believe that even the skeleton at the factory gate would be pleased to join with us , the Interested and Affected Parties, in proposing a toast to the success of the project, Nicola and Pieter.

PS A key part of an EIA is to evaluate a project from “Cradle to Grave”, but I was not sure if I should do this