Don’t blame the minister

Recently, headlines in financial dailies attributed the exit of the Union Environment Minister, Jayanthi Natarajan, more to her apparent inability to expedite the grant of environmental and forest clearances to industrial and other projects than to her desire to take up party work on a full-time basis.

Two years ago, the shifting of her predecessor, Jairam Ramesh, to another ministry had also been welcomed with snide comments that his heart was more with greenery than with industry.

Such reports lead the lay reader to believe that the delays are attributable to individuals and their replacement by efficient, pro-growth ministers would solve the problem.

Some decisions taken by the new minister Veerappa Moily within days of his assuming charge may lend credence to such a view. But, is the matter as simple as that? Does the burden of delay in according clearances lie with the ministers or with the system?

EARLY REGULATION

The scrutiny of projects likely to pose a significant adverse impact on the natural environment has its origins in the Third Five Year Plan document which called for the integration of environmental concerns with economic development. Even in the 1970s, large projects proposed to be undertaken by the state and central governments were required to obtain a green nod from the then National Committee on Environmental Planning and Coordination, and later from the newly created Department of Science and Technology.

Perhaps, the most well known of the projects scrutinised and denied clearance in those days was the Silent Valley hydropower project in Kerala. An example of a project that was allowed after considering objections of Alphonso mango growers of Raigarh in Maharashtra was the Thal-Vaishet gas-based fertiliser project.

Barring the Sardar Sarovar project, in no other case was there any challenge to the grant or refusal of environmental clearance. Also, media campaigns for or against projects were rare. Even with Sardar Sarovar, the protest centred on the relief given to displaced persons and their rehabilitation.

ENTER THE GREENS Come the 1980s, the situation changed dramatically. Green concerns, hitherto voiced by sober, knowledgeable, experienced conservationists, found themselves new champions. These new entrants discovered a powerful weapon in the writ jurisdictional powers of the higher judiciary to stay or quash government orders.

An effective way to seek court intervention was to give an environmental angle to the discussion by introducing a loaded phrase like “fragile ecology”.

This is not to say the concerns were always not genuine but only to highlight the point that litigation tended to become somewhat frivolous.

Since 1992, a new weapon to shoot down projects became available — the so-called “precautionary principle” enshrined in the Rio Declaration of Principles that came out of the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. It cautioned that non-availability of rigorous, scientific evidence of the adverse environmental impact of a project may not be taken as licence to go ahead with the project.

This healthy warning against laissez-faire development came to be looked upon as a guiding principle to err on the safe side in the environmental appraisal of projects, with inevitable refusal of clearance.

The Forest Conservation Act, 1980, introduced stringent examination of applications to divert forest land to non-forest purposes. This laudable piece of legislation and the measures of scrutiny that it called for proved effective in checking the steady erosion of forest area in the country. However, the procedure governing forest clearances was soon to prove a stumbling block even with projects for which forest land diversion was permissible.

Bone of contention Perhaps the most important pieces of legislation governing environmental clearances have been the notifications issued under the Environmental Protection Act, 1986, namely the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification of 1991,the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification of 1994 (EIA) and those relating to hazardous waste management and storage, handling and transportation of hazardous chemicals.

The first two with their periodic revisions have had the effect of prolonging the time required to process projects, much to the grief of the industry and often becoming a bone of contention between the Centre and the states.

The amendments introduced in 2006 to the EIA made the procedures truly complicated. Even urban land use planning and control that is the rightful turf of local bodies has been encroached upon by the MoEF.

The experience of the last decade has been frustrating to the industry, mining and infrastructure in particular. To be fair, not all the blame for this can be attributed to the MoEF.

Land acquisition has become well nigh impossible due to stiff resistance by land-holders, more so in tribal areas where, in addition, religious sentiments play an important role in preserving existing land use. The case of Dongri Konds in the Niyamgiri forests of Odisha who have been opposing the mining of bauxite in the area typifies this conflict.

We are witnessing environment and development locked in an unholy struggle. As strong as the growth lobby, if not stronger, is the green brigade.

Economic growth, food security and energy security have become victims to the enervating exchanges between the two. In this milieu, the head of the MoEF, as an individual, matters little. He or she is a part of the web the system has chosen to weave around the environmental cause. Environmental policy is framed by the Cabinet, legislation to implement it is enacted by Parliament and the implementation of legislation is overseen keenly by NGOs and often courts.

Highlighting her ministry’s dilemma, Natarajan asked helplessly as to who else would justify clearances given for projects before Parliament, the courts and the militant greens but the ministry itself.

Blaming an individual or a ministry for delays ducks the larger need to appraise our existing environmental policy and legislations in the light of our economic imperatives.

(The author is former Secretary, Union Ministry of Environment and Forests.)

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