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Dr. Bomo Edith Edna MolewaMinister of Environmental Affairs of the Republic of South Africa |
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Dr Bomo Edith Edna Molewa is the Minister of Environmental Affairs of the Republic of South Africa, since 2014. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Applied Sciences from the Vaal University of Technology (VUT) in 2016. A senior politician and chairperson of the ANC’s National Disciplinary Committee until 2017 chaired the ANC’s International Relations Subcommittee. Dr. Molewa was the first woman to be elected as Provincial Chairperson of the ANC in the North West in 2004. She was amongst the first group of Parliamentarians in the new democratic parliament in 1994 and made history by becoming the first female chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry. Her career in environmental conservation began when she headed the Department of Environment and Tourism in the North West Province in 1996, followed by the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Environment in 2000. She was appointed to Cabinet as Minister of Social Development in 2009, and in 2010 as Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs. She has headed the South African delegation to a number international negotiations in various fields, including the fields like Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), sustainable development, which culminated into the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the World Heritage Committee(WHC) and the international climate change negotiations in Mexico in 2010, then Durban in 2011 leading up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015. She is a respected leader on the African continent in a number of areas relating to water security, the environment and the global sustainable development agenda, and has served as President of the African Ministers Council on the Environment (AMCEN) and two terms as President of the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW). |