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Our country is in the throes of rapid
industrialisation, which is often accompanied with massive
environmental and social burdens, principally borne by
communities living in the vicinity of project sites. Monitoring
tools like Environment Impact Assessment (EIA), therefore,
assume great significance in ensuring sound economic development
without compromising on environmental and social costs.
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It is said that everyone from the Prime
Minister downwards, is concerned with the process of
environmental clearances: the process takes too much time, it is
cumbersome and impedes the breakneck speed of progress.
The entire clearance process is currently marked by
inefficiencies and a regulatory framework that is routinely
manipulated. Public participation, for instance, is today marked
by sham hearings, more to satisfy a formality, and less as a
crucial tool to involve people in the decision-making process.
It is quite clear that if the environment clearance process is
not rigorous or reliable, it will impinge on growth. People who
are affected by a bad industrial project - because it pollutes
their water or land or displaces them without compensation -
will protest. They will go to court. The democratic framework of
the country will assist them to get justice. The protest will
hold up the project. Again, if a project leads to environmental
damage - destroys forest ecosystems, biodiversity gene pools -
environmentalists will protest. Again, a project will be
embroiled in controversy and get delayed.
Governing equitable growth is important
because impoverishment in India is exacerbated by environmental
degradation. We cannot afford bad environmental management
because it will not lead to progress. But it only will lead to
deterioration in the environment.
So it is necessary to strengthen the process, turn it into an
audit. It must be done not to ‘clear’ a project, but to
substantially review and revise it so that affected people and
concerned citizens know the project is for the benefit of all,
and not for the greedy sake of some.
With key stakeholders still in the dark about the clearance
process, the abilities of both regulators and affected
communities to deconstruct the often technical EIA reports, for
instance, remain weak leading to uninformed and undemocratic
decision making.
Therefore there is an urgent need to build the capacity of the
stakeholders like the affected community and grassroots
activists to understand the entire clearance process and the
technicalities of the EIA. This will enable them to argue their
case if they are not convinced about the benefits of the
project.
The role of regulators, especially those at
the state level, is also becoming crucial in the entire process.
The new proposals put forward by the Ministry of Environment &
Forests (MEF) on EIA and clearances mechanisms puts emphasis on
decentralising the decision-making process to state level in the
environment clearance. Thus, there is a genuine need to develop
the capacity of the state-level regulators not only to screen
and scope the EIA process but also to effectively evaluate the
EIA report and conduct a fair public consultation.
Public consultation really make-or-break any regulatory process.
Unfortunately, it is here that we fatally err. It is not enough
to hear people. It is vital to ensure that they are heard. There
should be no categorisation of people into those who can ask
questions and those who cannot. The process must welcome
scrutiny. It must also support knowledge based critiques, by
funding open research on the projects, by opening schools that
teach people the science of environmental impact assessment. It
must push the concerns of people, because after all, that is its
purpose.
Ultimately, the EIA process is all about ensuring sustainable
development of country’s industrial and development growth by
taking the people along. EIA can be a good decision-making tool
but has many loopholes and weaknesses, which are manipulated by
the industry. This has made the EIA process ineffective and
meaningless. And we strongly believe that the process of
decision making, if flawed, will not be good either for
development or for democracy.
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