Ease of damaging ecology

The lockdown brought some cheer on the environment front, with air quality improving in urban areas and wild animals roaming freely in their habitat without human interference. It was clear that these fringe benefits of the lockdown were transitory. The unlocking process has brought back air pollution, with automobiles returning on roads and industries reopening. All these activities are considered necessary for the economy to be put back on the rails. Still it was hoped that that some lessons will be learnt from the temporary environmental gains experienced during the pandemic. In particular, the government and the Ministry of Environment and Forests were expected to become more sympathetic to the cause of the environment. A series of recent developments has dashed all such hopes.

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The first of such developments is the draft notification for changes in the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) process. The EIA is the central piece of India’s environment protection framework. Before any project is initiated, it is mandatory to conduct an assessment of how it will impact the environment when implemented. It is supposed to be a comprehensive scientific study of the likely impacts on water, air, wildlife, health etc. Findings of the EIA provide key inputs for a final decision on environmental clearance of projects and formulation of the Environment Management Plan (EMP) once projects are implemented. The EIA was made mandatory for a range of projects under the provisions of the Environment Protection Act, 1986. From time to time, EIA rules have been amended and expanded. Some changes such as mandatory public hearings were introduced in the framework. Still a number of projects in the past have been cleared with faulty EIA reports submitted by project proponents — both public sector entities and private companies. In many cases, the process of public hearing has either been bypassed or reduced to a sham.

In this backdrop, the need was to make implementation of the present EIA framework more stringent. Instead, the draft EIA 2020 seeks to dilute existing provisions. Project proponents — government and private companies — see the EIA as a stumbling block. The government too feels the EIA and environment clearance should not come in the way of ‘ease of doing business’. The draft EIA, therefore, seeks to allow ‘post facto’ environment clearance of projects. It means a project can be initiated without waiting for the EIA, and if found violative of law later, project proponents can ‘legalise’ their actions by paying penalties. In effect, this kills the very idea of the EIA which is based on precautionary principle. The Supreme Court as well as the National Green Tribunal, in their past judgments, have warned against such practice. The SC in April this year had observed that ‘the concept of ex post facto environment clearance is in derogation of fundamental principles of environmental jurisprudence’. Another sinister provision in the EIA draft is to take away the right of local communities and civil society to point out violations, effectively barring public interest litigations about violation of environmental clearance conditions by project proponents. Now, only the government will have this right.

In addition, the list of industry categories for which public consultation and approval of the Environment Appraisal Committee would be required has been pruned and classifications are proposed to be changed. The type of projects for which public consultation will not be required includes area development projects, production of many chemicals, expansion or widening of national highways, construction of roads inside national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, etc.

What faulty and compromised environmental regulation and implementation can do to the environment and lives of the people is clear from recent incidents in Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. The LG Polymers gas leak, which killed 12 people, exposed gaps in environmental oversight and safety systems. The state pollution control board has been issuing permissions to the company under the Water Act citing ‘zero liquid discharge’. The company was routinely issued ‘consent for operation’, assuming there were no air emissions, while emissions did occur from styrene plants, as pointed out by an independent collective called ‘Scientists for People’ that has critiqued reports of two technical panels formed to investigate into the gas leak. State-level green enforcement agencies are either understaffed or compromised in industry clusters where green regulations need to be more rigorous.

Another blatant example of how project proponents, including the government, play devious games to bypass EIAs is the Char Dham Pariyojana for widening the road to Badrinath and Kedarnath into a four-lane national highway. It involves widening the entire stretch of 900 km of hill roads that connect the four religious and tourist places. However, the Ministry of Road Transport broke up the project into 53 smaller projects of less than 100 km each, just to evade the provision of the EIA. If there is no EIA, there is no need for preparing any EMP for remedial action. The project has already led to massive slope cutting, felling of trees and is resulting in disasters like landslides in stretches, according to an expert committee report submitted to the SC last week. Most of the 53 stretches constitute a fragile ecosystem and at least nine of them harbour wildlife, for which permission of the National Wildlife Board is mandatory (but has not been taken). In a hurry to push the project, the ministry unashamedly ignored its own 2018 order that stated that the national highway standard of constructing 12-metre-wide ‘double lane with paved shoulder’ should not be applied to highways in hill regions, given their ecological sensitivity.

Ignoring environmental concerns and not addressing issues relating to health while blindly chasing economic growth can be counterproductive in the long run.