Gaon Connection: What is the main problem with the draft EIA notification 2020?
Chandra Bhushan: The draft EIA notification 2020 seeks to replace the existing law – the EIA notification of 2006 – which grants environment clearance to projects. The major criticisms against the new draft are that it dilutes scope of public participation, legalizes post-facto environment clearance, removes the requirements of EIA study for several categories of projects, and weakens the provisions of reporting by companies. To understand the significance of these changes, we need to look at the 2006 notification.
GC: Are these concerns with the EIA notification of 2006?
CB: The EIA notification of 2006 is possibly the most amended piece of environmental law. In 14 years, it has been amended 43 times, and at least 50 office memorandums, worth at least 350 pages, have been issued to tweak this law. Many of these changes have diluted the original version for some or other industry.
The 2020 draft, in large part, brings together these revisions. Therefore, effectively the 2020 version is a little worse than the existing one. So, while I appreciate the criticism of the proposed draft, keeping the 2006 version or even improving it is not going to solve the deep-rooted problems with the EIA process.
GC: Why do you think the existing EIA law is not working?
CB: First, relying solely on the EIA of individual projects is bad science. The environment is affected by the cumulative impacts of all activities, which project-specific EIAs fail to capture. Even if individual projects meet all benchmarks, their cumulative effects may still destroy the environment. This is evident in most mining and industrial areas of the country – from Singrauli to Korba and from Vapi to Patancheru.
Second, the EIA report is prepared by a consultant paid by the project proponent. This creates an apparent conflict of interest, and therefore most EIA reports are not worth the paper they are written on. I am yet to come across an EIA report that says a project will cause significant ecological impacts.
GC: There are concerns around public hearing too. What are those?
CB: The process of public hearing, which is mandated to take into account the concerns of the project-affected people, is a sham. It is neither an informed consultation nor informed consent. Most times, it is organised in the presence of police force, and physical violence is not uncommon.
Worst still, concerns of the community are dealt with in a cursory way by the Expert Appraisal Committees. These committees typically ask companies to make some investments like building schools or providing drinking water to appease the community. The Union environment ministry has even formalised this by calling these expenditures ‘Corporate Environment Responsibility’ and directing companies to earmark 0.125 per cent to 2 per cent of the capital investment on Corporate Environment Responsibility.
Finally, the environmental conditions imposed on the companies are rarely monitored by authorities. Monitoring is based on self-certified half-yearly reports submitted by companies; this has been reduced to yearly report in the 2020 draft.
GC: So, the EIA and environment clearance process is not functioning well in the country?
CB: The fact is the current EIA and environment clearance process in India is defunct. While it involves a lot of paperwork, there is little improvement on the ground. 99.9 per cent of the projects are cleared, and non-compliance of the safeguards is rampant.
GC: Those are some really serious concerns. How can we improve the EIA law of the country?
CB: We need a new EIA law based on sound science, and robust and transparent decision-making processes to safeguard environment and community rights as well as to reduce investment risks of industries. This can be achieved by integrating three environmental concepts.
The first is the strategic environmental assessment. Such as assessment will help evaluate the ecological ramification of policies and plans and address concerns at the earliest stage of the decision-making process. Many countries have adopted the strategic environmental assessment to integrate environmental concerns in policy-making.
The second is the regional planning approach. This involves conducting carrying capacity studies and developing regional plans based on them. This will allow us to take into account cumulative impacts and also provide information to project proponents to decide the location of the projects beforehand.
The third is project-specific EIAs. In this, EIAs should be done for big projects; doing EIA for small projects is a travesty of the EIA process. The focus here should be to improve environmental management plans and post-clearance monitoring. To enhance the quality of EIA reports, Environment Information Centres should be established to provide independent data to consultants and the Expert Appraisal Committees.
In all the three processes, public participation should be ensured to improve assessment and scrutiny.
GC: Apart from these important interventions, any other comments you have on the EIA debate in the country?
CB: The EIA process is the most important piece of environmental law as it has the scope to decide the development trajectory of the country. But this powerful piece of legislation has never been discussed or legislated by the Parliament. Time has come to take the EIA discourse to the Parliament floor and develop a new law suitable for the 21st century.
Also Read: Experts urge environment minister to withdraw, shelve EIA Notification, 2020. Read the letter here.
