The Hindu Business Line : The dynamics of sustainable development

DECLINING forest cover, sinking water table, increasing soil erosion, rising fresh water scarcity, mounting environmental pollution all call for a broad-based sustainable development that is equitable, encourages participation and is environmentally sustainable.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) progressively attempted to disseminate clean technology and environmental management through propagation of ISO 14,000 and EMS (Environmental Media Services), greening the supply change, due diligence, and improved management systems.

While both substantive and procedural laws relating to environment need to be tightened, what is basically needed is social will and coherent strategy.

Environmental plans and programmes need to be reinforced by executive interest, strict enforcement of regulations and increased awareness. The Table illustrates how development planning needs to take place at all levels:

A cost-benefit analysis of projects must factor in appropriate discount rates, substitutability and the assurance of inter and intra-generational equity through institutional regulation, community participation and education to seek long-term solutions.

These call for four prerequisites: (i) the rate of regeneration must exceed or equal the rate of harvest; (ii) waste emissions should not exceed the renewable assimilative capacity of the micro-environment; (iii) the rate of exploitation of non-renewable resources (NRR) must always be less than or equal to the rate of creation of renewable substitutes; and (iv) in case an existing renewable resource is to substitute for a depleting NRR, its rate of harvest must be less than its rate of regeneration to the extent necessary to prevent this substitution.

All this calls for a proactive approach in coordinating and implementing policy incentives and programmes at various levels of government.

Role of indigenous people

Country Level Development Strategies (CLDSs) aim at reducing poverty by emphasising national ownership, prioritising poverty reduction and sustainable development and addressing macro-economic and socio-structural issues. Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches (SLAs) based on livelihood concerns and food security of local communities enhance both the process and content of CLDSs. But before such strategies are adopted, they need to be well adapted to local realities.

Promising strategies to conserve wilderness include debt-for-nature swaps, carbon credit offsets, conservation concessions, eco-tourism, marine reserves, wildlife corridors, philanthropy and indigenous control.

Apart from legal bans on hunting and trade in India, official attempts have stressed creation of vast protected area network of biosphere, national parks and sanctuaries.

Effective environmental management, inter alia, requires local to global interventions for expanding water and sanitation coverage, tackling air and noise pollution, controlling disease vectors, eco-friendly industrialisation by pollution abatement measures, reducing exposure to the worst offenders and cleaner production, etc.

A cleaner environment

Corporate Responsibility for Environment Protection practice techniques (CREP) Implementation and Monitoring must be strictly implemented to involve businesses and industries in effectively managing and reducing environmental wastes. Cleaner production (CP), the continuous application of an integrated preventive environmental strategy to processes and products to reduce risks, leads to financial benefits of 10-15 per cent through energy savings, waste reduction and higher quality-output.

The service industry also needs to adopt an eco-friendly approach through a holistic approach of reducing cost, increasing productivity, conserving resources and environment.

Initial emphasis on controlling industrial pollution at discharge points (`end of the pipe') gradually gave way to Environmental Management System (EMS), such as, ISO 14001 and Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). With about 140 companies, mostly in the large industry sector, obtaining ISO 14001 certification in India, ISO 14001 plus approach, creation of a national accreditation body and engagement of competent groups of environmental auditors and certifying agencies is needed.

Choices and challenges

Organisational pollution control requires cost-effective cleaner technologies, afforestation and appropriate pollution control technologies, formation of Waste Minimisation Circles (WMCs), taxation on wastage, and prior environmental clearance for establishing industries. What is also required is a comprehensive database on industries, rehabilitation of industrial units in certain areas, determination of optimal size of industrial units, demonstration of waste minimisation options and cleaner production techniques, proper training of personnel, R&D activities and close monitoring of CETPs in industrial estates/clusters. What is basically needed, as a recent leader in The Economist cogently argued, is a leapfrogging "from the dark ages of clumsy, costly, command-and-control regulations to an enlightened age of informed, innovative, incentive-based greenery".

The World Development Report (WDR) 2003 stressed the interaction between economic, social and environmental problems and opportunities are manifested spatially — where people live; institutions need to be improved at many levels to promote growth in ways that protect the environment. The first step in achieving all this is equitable allocation of resources, introducing new technologies for efficient resource use and need-oriented economic and ecological development. Empowering the local government and people, increasing afforestation and preventing swamping of traditional social and cultural systems would further the pursuit of win-win options.

In the ultimate analysis, eco-friendly development is often the best way to enhance economic development. Worldwide experiences demonstrate that environmentally unsustainable practices turn out to be more expensive in the long run because of human and health costs and loss of capability. Dithering on sustainable development arises from "the social and political problems associated with distributing costs and benefits within and between groups and generations" (WDR, 2003).

Devising an appropriate policy framework to evolve a suitable collaborative arrangement between the government and the voluntary sector is necessary to satisfy the concerns of all stake holders — the government, industry, neighbouring communities, customers and society at large. The promotion of wholesome development is not easy. But with cutting edge policy and implementation, together we must make a difference to the management of the dynamics of development. For maintaining eco-balance is a matter of choice, not chance.

(The author is chief economist, Canara Bank, Bangalore.)

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