A new giant leap

The idea of achieving growth while assuring a liveable environment, equitable and healthy social structure for present and future generations is at the heart of sustainable development. It's tough to achieve but do-able and the only way in the long run. Unfortunately, the story of India's development often appears distracted from it. A holistic policy framework towards the environment has been side-lined in the name of development. We often forget that environmental degradation, beyond a threshold limit, becomes irreversible and backfires on development efforts.

Despite having many environmental regulations, initiatives and full-fledged central and state-level regulatory systems, pollution remains a critical challenge in India. It essentially points-out to some inherent problems in the existing system — the first and foremost appears at the stage of environmental clearance.

Unfit clearance system

Like hundreds of other countries, the Indian system requires EIA for setting up new projects like- industry, highway, railway or its significant expansion. It is meant to predict the environmental impact and find ways of reducing it and fitting in with the local environment in order to get approval. Despite over 25 years of use, EIA has essentially failed to deliver the objective of clean and sustainable development disproportionate increase in pollution by projects resulting in critically polluted areas, non-attainment cities and polluted river stretches etc. are evident.

EIA's conceptual project-centric approach itself is a critical problem which doesn't assess cumulative impacts of other projects, area's supportive capacity and pollution assimilative capacity for the project. This means, even if a proposed project performs satisfactorily, cumulative pressure on the resources and impacts of pollution can go beyond the area's capacity. In a present-day scenario — with a high rate of industrialisation, fast-depleting natural resources and high pollution levels, the margins from threshold limits are usually very narrow. The imbalance between the quantum of developmental activities and area's threshold limit results in a disproportionate pollution level and stress on natural resources.

EIA also has inherent procedural problems — the project screening process focuses on the size of the investment and sensitive zones instead of important factors like pollutant types, project size, raw material and technology use. Similarly, the scoping process is to be done by proponents who intends to prove the project's benefits but not the impacts. The absence of guidelines for evaluation and prediction, reliable and updated baseline data with government agencies makes it even worse. In the end, when voluminous EIA reports of multiple projects altogether are tabled before the appraisal committee, proper evaluation in the given time becomes nearly impossible.

Questionable

The environmental clearance system, however, carries a holistic approach, the way it has been misused, made it questionable. In practicality, the strategy to secure environmental clearance runs around the idea — how easily and effectively the legal provisions can be by-passed or managed, by hook or by crook. Since this job goes to the EIA consultants hired by the proponent, inclination towards making a favourable report is natural. More sensitive the project related issues are, tougher is the job and higher is the prize. Therefore, many tricks are used, eventually, depending on the project type, location, sensitivity-level and of course available influence on the central or state-level machinery. Project proposals in sensitive-areas which are expected to invite criticism seek to get an exemption from the public hearing process and, if it becomes inevitable, there are attempts to make the restricted access to the public hearing notice and draft report, selective representation, orchestrated public hearing disruption or forceful management. In some cases, the project starts without prior clearance, and later on, the pressure is built for post-facto clearance using loop-holes in the system.

The poor quality of EIA reports — being a copy of others, having an inadequate assessment process and cooked data etc., is another concern. However, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) warns of rejection to such projects, it is very unlikely that appraising body can evaluate the reports in detail. The Quality Council of India (QCI) and the National Accreditation Board of Education and Training (NABET), the accrediting body, has the provision of withdrawal of accreditation in case of mischief, which is rarely used.

Unfortunately, the post-commissioning pollution monitoring job also lies with proponent who always shows compliance. Adding to this, provision of 'Rapid EIA' introduced in EIA manual 2001, giving the option of only a brief impact analysis instead of conventional EIA, further downgrades assessment.

On the top, the proponent's influence, by means of favouritism and political pressure, is also a known tool to assure easy clearance. Some of the projects which land into bigger controversy and reach the judiciary, the Government itself comes in support to save the project, even by amending the laws.

The fact that not even one per cent of the project proposals get rejected, literally claims that everything is fine — projects have no impacts, no pollution problem, no threat to natural resources, environment, biodiversity and public health — which is far from reality.

Debating EIA 2020

The MoEF&CC has proposed a new EIA notification in March 2020. Once notified, it would replace the currently effective EIA notification, 2006. Though the Ministry claims its intention is to make environmental clearance process smoother, transparent and aligned with ease-of-doing-business initiative; the environmental groups and political fraternity are calling it a departure from the environmental obligations. The criticism focuses on multiple points-

Shifting nearly 40 project categories to B2 Category where EIA is exempted.

Many new project categories including B2 Category, other exempted ones and up to 50 per cent capacity expansion projects need no public hearing process.

The existing 30 days-notice period for public hearings is being reduced to 20 days.

Slashes common public's right of protesting against the project violations, indicating that cognisance will be taken only on the reporting by relevant govt machinery.

Making provision for post-facto clearance which favours violators.

Relaxing the need for half-yearly compliance report submission to yearly report submission

Since its inception, the EIA provisions have been diluted over 50 times. Under every government's rule, it has gradually departed from the environmental obligations. The current debate is not new in any sense and it is expected to have a similar fate.

Joining the dots

EIA's systematic challenges — missing centralised, neutral and updated database is one of the most crucial ones. In order to assess the impacts of a proposed project, a range of baseline data related to environmental quality, forest, land use, water quality and availability, bio-diversity, legal and social status, etc., are required which are owned by respective government agencies. Besides the fact that these data sets are outdated and not uniform, the agencies are also not well-coordinated which makes cross-checking and verification almost impossible.

The information required for accessing the assimilative and supporting capacity of the area for a proposed project is missing. It's not about doing some new experiments — many good studies such as zoning atlas, carrying capacity, cumulative impact assessment have been carried by the agencies in the past. Whereas the zoning atlas, first attempted in 1988 for Puducherry, is meant to find environmentally project-suitable and not-so-suitable zones at the district level, carrying capacity study is to find the assimilative and supportive capacity of the particular area. The carrying capacity study for clearance of the river valley project is, in fact, mandatory in India since 2013.

The cumulative impact assessment (CIA) which is a better process than EIA, have already been carried voluntarily for various projects, where impact assessment of a proposed project is carried beside other projects in the area. Countries like the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia etc., have already moved from the EIA system to CIA for project clearance process, but India still has not. The Zoning Atlas, Carrying Capacity and CIA studies are successful experiences in the past, but never adopted into the system. Absence of will-power in the Central Government and non-supportive states, in the name of missing capacity and financial burden, are the culprits.

The comprehensive environmental pollution index (CEPI) was another study started in 2009, meant to study industrial clusters in order to assess cumulative pollution levels to prioritize mitigative actions. The first phase of the study identified 43 critically polluted areas out of 88 studied which were put under a moratorium for new project addition and any expansion until the pollution level decreases. Unfortunately, intense pressure from the industrial lobbies led into systematic dilution of the provisions that ultimately failed it.

Ultimate solution

The right vision and courage to take an initiative for long-term sustainable growth by the government(s) is the foremost requirement. The effective solution needs a revision of the environmental clearance system itself.

An ideal approach would be district-wise zonal atlas preparation by the Government to identify suitable and not-so-suitable areas for projects. The carrying capacity of identified zones needs to be studied next, that will guide the system for the type of projects suitable in the respective areas. Now when a project is proposed in the suitable zone, the proponent shall be asked to carry CIA study, instead of EIA, for environmental clearance. The environmental clearance should be allowed, only until carrying capacity of the area supports. The critically and severely polluted areas should be kept no-go-zones until they meet the environmental standards and accumulate enough carrying capacity for new projects. The studies carried by the governments can be used to make a credible, uniform and centralised database system having proper coordination with various relevant agencies.

Both a long-term and short- term plan shall be prepared for developing a new environment clearance system. Whereas the development of zoning atlas, carrying capacity study and legal amendments may put under a long-term plan, the short-term plan may include the development of sector-wise CIA guidelines, centralised database system and mandating CIA for new projects. The capacity building of stakeholders is important and a continuous process. A holistic environmental clearance process developed this way will assure sustainable and equitable socio-economic development throughout the country — a real need of the times.

The writer is an environmental research & advocacy expert