Pitching for environmentally benign progress, the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, has favoured proper enforcement of regulatory standards to prevent green damage while making sure that there is no return to the licence permit raj system.

He also backed the “polluter must pay” principle to deal with the issue of residual pollution that may be caused despite regulation.

“The central principle that must be enshrined in any sustainable development strategy is that incentives facing all economic decision makers must encourage them to act in a manner that is environmentally benign,” he said inaugurating the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2011 here today.

Dr Manmohan Singh’s remarks come in the wake of the Environment Ministry raising the red flag recently over several multi-billion dollar projects citing violation of green norms.

“We must put in place a structure of regulatory policies which will prevent potentially damaging behaviour. This is what we do by setting regulatory standards and enforcing them,” he said.

“I must emphasise that standards are not enough. They must also be enforced which is often difficult,” the Prime Minister said at the summit which was attended by the Presidents of Afghanistan, Dominican Republic and Seychelles, Mr Hamid Karzai, Mr Leonel Fernandez and Mr James Alix Michel, respectively.

At the same time, Dr Manmohan Singh said it was necessary to ensure that the regulatory standards do not bring back the licence permit raj which the Government had got rid of in the wake of economic reforms of the early nineties.

Noting that India was setting the standards for most energy consuming industries, he said “as a general rule we are trying to establish the principle that the polluter must pay though that is much more difficult to achieve in all cases’’.

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