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In South Africa we have four environmental narratives, on how the society and the environment interact, which are the conservation, the economic, non-state actors and the local views. Now each of these narratives have their own unique objectives rather goals and motives.

The conservation narrative, this view focus on giving protection to the environment  and people are excluded and their rights are removed to land and other resources such as water. According to Cook (2007),he says that this view is authoritarian negative, meaning it focus on harsh behaviours such as during apartheid. The motive of this is that it creates awareness and panic about how the environment is regarding the qualities. The focus and argument is on the overuse and over exploitation of resources within the environment. The conservation narrative has no enough legitimacy hence it ignored the way people interact with natural resources.

The economic view, views the environment as a commodity not for the locals but select privileged few. In this view the environment is seen as a solution to solve poverty. There is also the non-state actor which originate from the factors external parties example is education, outside the community meaning it doesn't need participation of the community. It's focus is on the importance of environment and has the responsibility of environmental ranking, believing that the resources are limited. The last narrative is the local community which is complex and is differentiated by means of power distribution, the quality level of the environment, geographical area, class and other factors. Its focus is focus is the people's relationship with the environment is disrupted or damaged by colonisation. People need the environment the most in this narrative as it is regarded as an important resource. 

Yes, these narratives contribute to understanding SA environment as they make it clear how people consider the environment and how they regard it, looking at the context of SA mostly visible narrative is the local community because how we have a lot of of activities that take place within the environment such as farming, we also have people who are governed to protect the natural resources but we much access to those resources hence somethings should be do to stop the overuse of natural resources and  damaging the environment.

In South Africa we have these sustainable development and environmentalism. The sustainable development is defined as a development that meets the needs of the present not compromising the ability of the upcoming generations to meet their own needs. This suggests that sustainable development is a process that happens right away for example in South Africa we have mining industries and it is not stopping because it sustains people and the present economy,not thinking about the future needs. We also have environmentalism which it shows the perspectives on the society-environment and it forms a climate for social dialogues regardless of the message is communicated and recieved. Sustainable development link to South African policies through through aspiring to be sustainable, self reliant by meeting human needs and managing its resources and being against other policies which result in the overuse of resources.