Mitigating the Impacts of Environmental Pollution in Lejweleputswa District Through Integration of Local and Scientific Knowledge

South Africa is home to extensive mining activities, although it is good for the economy it is also one of the more serious environmental problems such as air pollution, which is a major contributor to health issues and inability to grow crops within mining communities. Though the concerned industries (such as mining) and governments have developed environmental management systems/plans to identify, prevent/mitigate the impacts the mining activities have on the society, the effects of these plans have done little to redress the threats facing the community. The main reason for this is the lack of appropriate and comprehensible air pollution monitoring systems that are specifically targeted to the at-risk local communities. Sustainable, timely, and relevant air pollution monitoring systems enables communities to mitigate the negative impacts easily. Current pollution systems are fraught with challenges of not having adequate coverage by air quality monitoring stations, hence leaving small-rural communities unattended. These communities are left with only one option; consulting their own local knowledge to observe and mitigate air pollution. In this paper, we demonstrate the integration of scientific and local knowledge in monitoring air pollution for the district of Lejweleputswa, Free State, South Africa. Fuzzy Cognitive Maps was utilized as a tool to analyze, verify or validating local knowledge whereas Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) was used as a scientific approach to collect pollutants.