In nuances of political governance, the competitive zeal of
governments are never always prejudiced to do better, they might be seen competing
for worst as well. With NDA government completing one year of its ascent to
power, the glaring example of this notion rests with its Environment Minster, Mr.
Prakash Javadekar who has outwitted his predecessor Veerappa Moily by miles and
yet adding to the count of environmental clearances, having cleared more than 650
projects in 7 months by his own admission.
The TSR Subramanian High Level Committee (HLC) set up purportedly,
without any cabinet mandate by Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate
Change (MoEF&CC) was to align green laws at par to afford a “Single Window
Clearance” system, even for sensitive environment clearances. Never to mind to
check the track record of severe deviations on compliances and flouting of
existential laws already, the HLC immediately got down to review the Laws,
notably, The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, Forest (Conservation) Act,
1980, The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 and the Air
(Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981. The HLC placed it
recommendations in November 2014.
The brief of HLC one would have assumed was to de-bottleneck
the policy congestion for the Industry, setting up guidelines with significant
safeguards for ecology and environment, mandated under the MoEF&CC.
Instead, the committee recommendations, now almost accepted by the NDA
government, have severely diluted the environmental laws, edging them closer
from the origin of the Ministry’s mandate from “Protection of Environment” to solely
on “Ease of Doing Business” in India.
Besides recommending subsuming various laws into a single
over arching law, the Environment Law Management Act (ELMA), it suggests to creates
two bodies at both, Central; National Environment Management Authority (NEMA)
and State level; State Environment Management Authority (SEMA) to “fast track” clearances
for investments in development projects. Based on the principle of “Utmost good
faith”, it further plans to do away the monitoring functions of Central &
State Pollution Boards. Such is the reposed faith that it does not define “severe”
penalties and “financial burden” to be levied in case of any attempt found flouting
the environment protection rules by applicants..!
The primary contentious recommendation though of the HLC is
to dispense with Public Consultation and Public Hearings for “development”
projects and Arrogation of powers of both legislation and an Appellate tribunal
(dispensing with National Green Tribunal) under ELMA, with no
recourse to any court of law, even on “merit”, under the proposal.
The committee recommends that dispensing hearings should be “modified”
which shall pave way for faster clearances on the projects, for specific areas
including amending the Forest (Conversation) and Wild Life Protection Act “suitably”
devolving the powers of “Gram Sabha”, presently mandatory for project approvals
under Social & Environmental Impact Assessments (S&EIA) for protected
areas. The latter to add, has also been dispensed with under the proposed new
law.
It further goes on to request to define the “Forest” at the
earliest, calling summarily by itself the areas with less than 70% of canopy
covers as “treelands”, even if classified as and under “protected areas”. This essentially means
that the vast large patches spread across the country, which have seen enormous
environmental and climatic degradation on the canopy cover, would immediately
be available for “mega mining, industrial and infrastructural projects” and states
no longer shall be able to define or advise any “Go-No Go areas to the centre.
The threat of acceptance of this suggestion which came under
severe criticism by several environmentalist and activists on major
catastrophic impact on the environment was not lost when Mr. Javadekar in a
written submission on the floor of parliament in April mentioned that 36,000
hectare of forest land has already been diverted for some 784 projects, ostensibly
diluting the Forest Laws. This suggestion would further aid the executive
policy decisions in diverting more forest land sans any accountability in name
of development.
Under Mr. Javadekar the MoEF&CC now equally is in direct
confrontation with its own government Ministry, Ministry of Tribal Affairs and might
also find itself coming under the judicial scrutiny (hence the attempt to enact
the ELM Act) of the Courts of the country. Very specifically, the Supreme Court
which has repeatedly under pain has led to protect the indigenous rights of the
tribal’s to forest land, sustainability of livelihood from forest produce and
exploitation of its natural resources against any or either move of industrialisation.
The Ministry of Tribal Affairs has strongly refuted the
draft “revised” guidelines on compliances meant for The Scheduled Tribes and
Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 for
clearances of projects, calling it an overreach of MoE’s policy recommendation
into its turfs. It has indicated in no uncertain terms that it shall continue
to contest any dilutions so recommended, though for how long, is yet to be
seen.
Notwithstanding the domestic blunt side, India shall also be
flouting the 1992, “Rio Declaration on Environment and Development” with
impunity which amongst the major principles articulates, Public Participation
across all levels of citizenry including providing access to “all relevant
information” as necessary, involvement at all stages of decision making with
access to judicial and administrative proceedings and measures for redressing
grievances. All but few recommendations of HLC and MoEF’s grandstanding of
policy decisions relaxing “environmentally sensitive green norms” could afford
to expose itself to “litmus test” of these standards.
No surprises that on eve of completion of 1st
year, the “achievement report” released by MoEF&CC, called “Towards Transparency
& Good Governance” in May recently, it critically misses much mention on
further strengthening the guidelines on “Protection of Environment” but instead
claims “Changing many rules for the protection of environment” and aligning the
policy implementation and homogeneity of laws, and “clearances” of projects, as
its sole single policy achievement.
Noted Canadian Environmentalist David Suzuki through his
famous “Water Lilly” example explained the concept of exponential environmental
destruction. He brought forth hat the damage to the eco system is never progressively
linear, can’t be checked one at a time and hence difficult to monitor; and
that, any system could perhaps be assaulted from thousand sources making it
appear living one day and be dead the next.
The MoEF&CC must know that relaxation of norms to only
appear as “Pro Industry” by opening up of sensitive eco pockets hitherto out of
bounds and yet protected would only lead to an irreversible destruction which
no afforestation policy and the penalties could recover. Instead it must take a
“green leaf” from Suzuki’s prudent advice and ideally strengthen the
environmental governance avenues bringing robust institutional policy
guidelines and strict compliance to existential laws to arrest the climatic
decline and by instilling sufficient safeguards for the environment.
The indulgence hence for sake of posterity, is quite
"naturally” to ask, “On the swinging beam of Capital and Profits on one
side and Ecological and Environmental Protection Charter on the other - Which
side are you on Mr. Javadekar”..?
Abhishek Joshi
(Author is a New Delhi based Policy Analyst)
No comments:
Post a Comment