In this paper, we discuss the implications of a competitive framework of utilising the River Cauv... more In this paper, we discuss the implications of a competitive framework of utilising the River Cauvery's waters, in South India, by four riparian States. Karnataka, where the river originates, and Tamilnadu, the downstream state, are both critically dependent on the river's waters for agriculture, industry and urbanisation. However, in securing the waters based on regional constituency interests, and pressures, which often turns very violent, the river is being substantially damaged. What are the ways out of such a conundrum? This paper discusses some ways forward to make the region water secure, without destroying the Cauvery.
"This book is a ‘must read’ for policy makers, engineers, scientists, contractors, independent th... more "This book is a ‘must read’ for policy makers, engineers, scientists, contractors, independent thinkers and even investors who should be sensitive to India’s environment. The passionate plea at the end of the book for scrapping this notification and reinstating the 1994 notification minus its deficiencies does not seem to have been heard so far amidst the din and noise of the need for growth and investment, but a heavy price will be paid by future generations of Indians if such cautionary signals emanating from publications such as this are ignored." - R. Rajamani, former Environment Secretary of India.
This study is an effort to deeply enquire into the circumstances and the basis for the approval o... more This study is an effort to deeply enquire into the circumstances and the basis for the approval of the mega POSCO project in Odisha. An array of historical evidence is surveyed to appreciate the rich biodiversity of the Jagatsinghpur region over time and the nature of relationships between communities and forests. On this basis, the environmental and social impact information of POSCO's steel-power-port components is critiqued to expose the fact that regulatory agencies could not have known anything of the short term and long term impacts of the project on the basis of the information that the company supplied to them. This report exposes the disastrous consequences of locating this mega venture in a region known to be the amongst the most vulnerable to frequent cyclonic activity in the world.
While the potential devastating consequences of the mining components of the project is noted with grave concern, its impacts have not been reviewed here. This is because the Odisha Government has only indicated that the proposed mines are to be in the Kadadhar hills of Sundergarh district, but has not identified the exact location. This report also does not review the economic impacts of the project for this has been comprehensively achieved in the report of the Mining Zone Peoples' Solidarity Group entitled “Iron and Steal: The POSCO-India Story”.
Finally, this is an effort to appreciate the strange nature of environmental decision making in India, as it is also a study of the dissembling of Jairam Ramesh who admittedly “under pressure”2 approved the POSCO project thus supporting the comprehensive violation of India's environmental, forest protection and forest rights acts, amongst others.
In 1985, unprecedentedly, the Government of Karnataka instituted the State Environmental Clearanc... more In 1985, unprecedentedly, the Government of Karnataka instituted the State Environmental Clearance Committee (SECC). Since there had not been a review of the efficacy of the SECC mechanism since it was established, in 2013, Mr. Sridharan, IAS, then Principal Secretary of the Karnataka Department of Ecology, Environment and Forests directed the state's Environmental Management Policy Research Institute (EMPRI) to undertake a comprehensive review of the SECC. EMPRI contracted, as consultants, the services of the three primary authors of this report to conduct a detailed review of the SECC on the guarantee that the final report would be made public. On this basis, a study was undertaken over a period of one year with excellent support and cooperation from the EMPRI leadership and staff. A framework was developed to rigorously and comprehensive assess and analyse the working of the SECC. This involved reviewing 447 SECC clearances from 2002-2012 that had been accorded to dams, industries, mining projects, infrastructure projects, biotech firms, radiation processing units, etc. and field verification of 10% of these projects across various sectors and districts to assess the extent of compliance with clearance conditions. The quality of the clearances accorded were also thoroughly reviewed for sectoral specificity. In addition, feedback was actively solicited from each and every project cleared and also commerce and industry associations, academicians, consultants, regulatory officials, etc. On the basis of this work, the three primary authors prepared a draft report in collaboration with EMPRI and proposed various ways to reform the agency in securing the ecological security of the State. The Final Draft Report reviewing SECC was submitted in January 2014 to Mr. Sivasailam, IAS, at that time the Principal Secretary of the Karnataka Environment Department. Within days, i.e. on 7th February 2014, the Karnataka Environment Department decided to scrap the SECC. A modified form of the draft report was finalised as the EMPRI Report in March 2014. This Report is made available here in the public interest. More details regarding this report may be accessed online at http://www.esgindia.org/campaigns/bajpe/press/karnataka-scraps-state-environmental-cle.html and at http://tinyurl.com/mxrvbcb
"This book is a ‘must read’ for policy makers, engineers, scientists, contractor... more "This book is a ‘must read’ for policy makers, engineers, scientists, contractors, independent thinkers and even investors who should be sensitive to India’s environment. The passionate plea at the end of the book for scrapping this notification and reinstating the 1994 notification minus its deficiencies does not seem to have been heard so far amidst the din and noise of the need for growth and investment, but a heavy price will be paid by future generations of Indians if such cautionary signals emanating from publications such as this are ignored." - R. Rajamani, former Environment Secretary of India.
This paper, part of a volume entitled "Living Rivers, Dying Rivers: A Quest through India" publis... more This paper, part of a volume entitled "Living Rivers, Dying Rivers: A Quest through India" published by Oxford University Press, and edited by Late Ramaswamy R Iyer, discusses the various challenges of protecting river Cauvery for posterity given the enormous demands on its waters for drinking water, agriculture, industrial and other demands and ensuing conflicts in the riparian states of Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Pondicherry and Kerala. The authors contrast the mythological sacredness of the river with its prevailing destructive use and question if contemporary political realities can help shape a relationship with the river that moves beyond conflict over its waters to revering it as a river of life filled with a celebration of its biodiversity, culture and tradition of appropriate usage of its waters.
A Critique of India's Environmental Laws Amendment Bill, 2015, submitted to Union Ministry of En... more A Critique of India's Environmental Laws Amendment Bill, 2015, submitted to Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change
On 29th August 2014 the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change of the Government of In... more On 29th August 2014 the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change of the Government of India (hereinafter referred to as MoEF & CC) set up a High Level Committee headed by former Union Cabinet Secretary Mr. T. S. R. Subramanian, IAS (Retd.). This Committee was given a comprehensive mandate: to review all laws and judgments pertaining to environment, wildlife and forest protection, and also those relating to pollution control, and then produce a report with specific recommendations for reforms in law and governance. This enormous and complex exercise of review of laws and judgments, and governance practices, followed by the formulation and presentation of a report with recommendations for amendments to existing laws, was to be completed within 2 months.
The deadline for completion of the Committee's tasks was extended by a month, and the final report was submitted by the Committee to Shri. Prakash Javadekar, Union Minister of State for Environment, Forests and Climate Change with Independent Charge on 18th November 2014.1 The report was not made public at that time. However, it was leaked, and it soon became available on various websites of media and environmental and social action groups. Soon after, an embarrassed Ministry also made the report available on its website.
In our critique of the High Powered Committee Report, we find that the entire exercise has been undertaken in a hurried manner, without sufficient inquiry into the relevant factors, without addressing concerns of a range of communities, especially those which are indigenous and natural resource dependent, and without at all considering the importance of consulting elected representatives from Local Government, Legislatures and the Parliament. This report, thereby, is an outcome of a comprehensively democracy deficit effort, and promotes a schema for environmental reforms, which, if adopted could result in widespread chaos in environmental governance and jurisprudence, and also would result in irreversible damage to the environment, cause widespread loss of natural ecosystems and could further fuel fundamental violation of human rights in a country where discontents over environmental decisions are become increasingly contentious.
There are elements in the Committee's report that are worth taking note of and possibly implementing. But these are few and far between, and a bulk of the Committee's recommendations are based on an extraordinary reliance on the capacity of technical bureaucracy to deliver good environmental governance, on market forces to meet environmental management objectives, on a slew of new regulatory and judicial forums to police the system, without actually making an effort to enquire and justify if such comprehensive makeover in the environmental decision making system is essential at all. Neither does the Committee formulate its tasks clearly, nor does it make any effort to clearly explain the basis of its recommendations. In light of which, what the Committee recommends comes across as a set of confusing proposals which if implemented could confound the environmental governance system quite fundamentally.
With this in view, and in the interest of present and futures generations of the country, and also in securing the extraordinary biodiversity of the region that has evolved over billions of years, we urge the Government of India to comprehensively reject the recommendations of this Committee. In the national interest we urge the Government to repeat the exercise ensuring terms of reference are clear and not caged by catch phrases that confound more than clarify, by involving an inter-disciplinary committee consisting of women and men, experienced and expert members, and drawn from various geographies, supported by a deeply democratic process and with sufficient time and space for public consultations nation-wide, so that the outcome would be recalled as a monumental effort that not only secured national interest, but also that of a world precariously edging towards runaway climate change induced impacts.
A copy of the critique of the High Powered Committee Report, entitled “A Non-trivial Threat to India's Ecological and Economic Security”, may be accessed at: www.esgindia.org.
In this paper, we discuss the implications of a competitive framework of utilising the River Cauv... more In this paper, we discuss the implications of a competitive framework of utilising the River Cauvery's waters, in South India, by four riparian States. Karnataka, where the river originates, and Tamilnadu, the downstream state, are both critically dependent on the river's waters for agriculture, industry and urbanisation. However, in securing the waters based on regional constituency interests, and pressures, which often turns very violent, the river is being substantially damaged. What are the ways out of such a conundrum? This paper discusses some ways forward to make the region water secure, without destroying the Cauvery.
"This book is a ‘must read’ for policy makers, engineers, scientists, contractors, independent th... more "This book is a ‘must read’ for policy makers, engineers, scientists, contractors, independent thinkers and even investors who should be sensitive to India’s environment. The passionate plea at the end of the book for scrapping this notification and reinstating the 1994 notification minus its deficiencies does not seem to have been heard so far amidst the din and noise of the need for growth and investment, but a heavy price will be paid by future generations of Indians if such cautionary signals emanating from publications such as this are ignored." - R. Rajamani, former Environment Secretary of India.
This study is an effort to deeply enquire into the circumstances and the basis for the approval o... more This study is an effort to deeply enquire into the circumstances and the basis for the approval of the mega POSCO project in Odisha. An array of historical evidence is surveyed to appreciate the rich biodiversity of the Jagatsinghpur region over time and the nature of relationships between communities and forests. On this basis, the environmental and social impact information of POSCO's steel-power-port components is critiqued to expose the fact that regulatory agencies could not have known anything of the short term and long term impacts of the project on the basis of the information that the company supplied to them. This report exposes the disastrous consequences of locating this mega venture in a region known to be the amongst the most vulnerable to frequent cyclonic activity in the world.
While the potential devastating consequences of the mining components of the project is noted with grave concern, its impacts have not been reviewed here. This is because the Odisha Government has only indicated that the proposed mines are to be in the Kadadhar hills of Sundergarh district, but has not identified the exact location. This report also does not review the economic impacts of the project for this has been comprehensively achieved in the report of the Mining Zone Peoples' Solidarity Group entitled “Iron and Steal: The POSCO-India Story”.
Finally, this is an effort to appreciate the strange nature of environmental decision making in India, as it is also a study of the dissembling of Jairam Ramesh who admittedly “under pressure”2 approved the POSCO project thus supporting the comprehensive violation of India's environmental, forest protection and forest rights acts, amongst others.
In 1985, unprecedentedly, the Government of Karnataka instituted the State Environmental Clearanc... more In 1985, unprecedentedly, the Government of Karnataka instituted the State Environmental Clearance Committee (SECC). Since there had not been a review of the efficacy of the SECC mechanism since it was established, in 2013, Mr. Sridharan, IAS, then Principal Secretary of the Karnataka Department of Ecology, Environment and Forests directed the state's Environmental Management Policy Research Institute (EMPRI) to undertake a comprehensive review of the SECC. EMPRI contracted, as consultants, the services of the three primary authors of this report to conduct a detailed review of the SECC on the guarantee that the final report would be made public. On this basis, a study was undertaken over a period of one year with excellent support and cooperation from the EMPRI leadership and staff. A framework was developed to rigorously and comprehensive assess and analyse the working of the SECC. This involved reviewing 447 SECC clearances from 2002-2012 that had been accorded to dams, industries, mining projects, infrastructure projects, biotech firms, radiation processing units, etc. and field verification of 10% of these projects across various sectors and districts to assess the extent of compliance with clearance conditions. The quality of the clearances accorded were also thoroughly reviewed for sectoral specificity. In addition, feedback was actively solicited from each and every project cleared and also commerce and industry associations, academicians, consultants, regulatory officials, etc. On the basis of this work, the three primary authors prepared a draft report in collaboration with EMPRI and proposed various ways to reform the agency in securing the ecological security of the State. The Final Draft Report reviewing SECC was submitted in January 2014 to Mr. Sivasailam, IAS, at that time the Principal Secretary of the Karnataka Environment Department. Within days, i.e. on 7th February 2014, the Karnataka Environment Department decided to scrap the SECC. A modified form of the draft report was finalised as the EMPRI Report in March 2014. This Report is made available here in the public interest. More details regarding this report may be accessed online at http://www.esgindia.org/campaigns/bajpe/press/karnataka-scraps-state-environmental-cle.html and at http://tinyurl.com/mxrvbcb
"This book is a ‘must read’ for policy makers, engineers, scientists, contractor... more "This book is a ‘must read’ for policy makers, engineers, scientists, contractors, independent thinkers and even investors who should be sensitive to India’s environment. The passionate plea at the end of the book for scrapping this notification and reinstating the 1994 notification minus its deficiencies does not seem to have been heard so far amidst the din and noise of the need for growth and investment, but a heavy price will be paid by future generations of Indians if such cautionary signals emanating from publications such as this are ignored." - R. Rajamani, former Environment Secretary of India.
This paper, part of a volume entitled "Living Rivers, Dying Rivers: A Quest through India" publis... more This paper, part of a volume entitled "Living Rivers, Dying Rivers: A Quest through India" published by Oxford University Press, and edited by Late Ramaswamy R Iyer, discusses the various challenges of protecting river Cauvery for posterity given the enormous demands on its waters for drinking water, agriculture, industrial and other demands and ensuing conflicts in the riparian states of Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Pondicherry and Kerala. The authors contrast the mythological sacredness of the river with its prevailing destructive use and question if contemporary political realities can help shape a relationship with the river that moves beyond conflict over its waters to revering it as a river of life filled with a celebration of its biodiversity, culture and tradition of appropriate usage of its waters.
A Critique of India's Environmental Laws Amendment Bill, 2015, submitted to Union Ministry of En... more A Critique of India's Environmental Laws Amendment Bill, 2015, submitted to Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change
On 29th August 2014 the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change of the Government of In... more On 29th August 2014 the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change of the Government of India (hereinafter referred to as MoEF & CC) set up a High Level Committee headed by former Union Cabinet Secretary Mr. T. S. R. Subramanian, IAS (Retd.). This Committee was given a comprehensive mandate: to review all laws and judgments pertaining to environment, wildlife and forest protection, and also those relating to pollution control, and then produce a report with specific recommendations for reforms in law and governance. This enormous and complex exercise of review of laws and judgments, and governance practices, followed by the formulation and presentation of a report with recommendations for amendments to existing laws, was to be completed within 2 months.
The deadline for completion of the Committee's tasks was extended by a month, and the final report was submitted by the Committee to Shri. Prakash Javadekar, Union Minister of State for Environment, Forests and Climate Change with Independent Charge on 18th November 2014.1 The report was not made public at that time. However, it was leaked, and it soon became available on various websites of media and environmental and social action groups. Soon after, an embarrassed Ministry also made the report available on its website.
In our critique of the High Powered Committee Report, we find that the entire exercise has been undertaken in a hurried manner, without sufficient inquiry into the relevant factors, without addressing concerns of a range of communities, especially those which are indigenous and natural resource dependent, and without at all considering the importance of consulting elected representatives from Local Government, Legislatures and the Parliament. This report, thereby, is an outcome of a comprehensively democracy deficit effort, and promotes a schema for environmental reforms, which, if adopted could result in widespread chaos in environmental governance and jurisprudence, and also would result in irreversible damage to the environment, cause widespread loss of natural ecosystems and could further fuel fundamental violation of human rights in a country where discontents over environmental decisions are become increasingly contentious.
There are elements in the Committee's report that are worth taking note of and possibly implementing. But these are few and far between, and a bulk of the Committee's recommendations are based on an extraordinary reliance on the capacity of technical bureaucracy to deliver good environmental governance, on market forces to meet environmental management objectives, on a slew of new regulatory and judicial forums to police the system, without actually making an effort to enquire and justify if such comprehensive makeover in the environmental decision making system is essential at all. Neither does the Committee formulate its tasks clearly, nor does it make any effort to clearly explain the basis of its recommendations. In light of which, what the Committee recommends comes across as a set of confusing proposals which if implemented could confound the environmental governance system quite fundamentally.
With this in view, and in the interest of present and futures generations of the country, and also in securing the extraordinary biodiversity of the region that has evolved over billions of years, we urge the Government of India to comprehensively reject the recommendations of this Committee. In the national interest we urge the Government to repeat the exercise ensuring terms of reference are clear and not caged by catch phrases that confound more than clarify, by involving an inter-disciplinary committee consisting of women and men, experienced and expert members, and drawn from various geographies, supported by a deeply democratic process and with sufficient time and space for public consultations nation-wide, so that the outcome would be recalled as a monumental effort that not only secured national interest, but also that of a world precariously edging towards runaway climate change induced impacts.
A copy of the critique of the High Powered Committee Report, entitled “A Non-trivial Threat to India's Ecological and Economic Security”, may be accessed at: www.esgindia.org.
A review of the efficacy of biodiversity protection laws of India in the context of biopiracy eng... more A review of the efficacy of biodiversity protection laws of India in the context of biopiracy engaged in by Monsanto/Mahyco and their collaborators in promoting and securing statutory clearances for B.t. Brinjal in India.
Quantifying Environmental Damage, Ecosystem Services, Green Accounting and Natural Capital in Dec... more Quantifying Environmental Damage, Ecosystem Services, Green Accounting and Natural Capital in Decision Making
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While the potential devastating consequences of the mining components of the project is noted with grave concern, its impacts have not been reviewed here. This is because the Odisha Government has only indicated that the proposed mines are to be in the Kadadhar hills of Sundergarh district, but has not identified the exact location. This report also does not review the economic impacts of the project for this has been comprehensively achieved in the report of the Mining Zone Peoples' Solidarity Group entitled “Iron and Steal: The POSCO-India Story”.
Finally, this is an effort to appreciate the strange nature of environmental decision making in India, as it is also a study of the dissembling of Jairam Ramesh who admittedly “under pressure”2 approved the POSCO project thus supporting the comprehensive violation of India's environmental, forest protection and forest rights acts, amongst others.
Papers
The deadline for completion of the Committee's tasks was extended by a month, and the final report was submitted by the Committee to Shri. Prakash Javadekar, Union Minister of State for Environment, Forests and Climate Change with Independent Charge on 18th November 2014.1 The report was not made public at that time. However, it was leaked, and it soon became available on various websites of media and environmental and social action groups. Soon after, an embarrassed Ministry also made the report available on its website.
In our critique of the High Powered Committee Report, we find that the entire exercise has been undertaken in a hurried manner, without sufficient inquiry into the relevant factors, without addressing concerns of a range of communities, especially those which are indigenous and natural resource dependent, and without at all considering the importance of consulting elected representatives from Local Government, Legislatures and the Parliament. This report, thereby, is an outcome of a comprehensively democracy deficit effort, and promotes a schema for environmental reforms, which, if adopted could result in widespread chaos in environmental governance and jurisprudence, and also would result in irreversible damage to the environment, cause widespread loss of natural ecosystems and could further fuel fundamental violation of human rights in a country where discontents over environmental decisions are become increasingly contentious.
There are elements in the Committee's report that are worth taking note of and possibly implementing. But these are few and far between, and a bulk of the Committee's recommendations are based on an extraordinary reliance on the capacity of technical bureaucracy to deliver good environmental governance, on market forces to meet environmental management objectives, on a slew of new regulatory and judicial forums to police the system, without actually making an effort to enquire and justify if such comprehensive makeover in the environmental decision making system is essential at all. Neither does the Committee formulate its tasks clearly, nor does it make any effort to clearly explain the basis of its recommendations. In light of which, what the Committee recommends comes across as a set of confusing proposals which if implemented could confound the environmental governance system quite fundamentally.
With this in view, and in the interest of present and futures generations of the country, and also in securing the extraordinary biodiversity of the region that has evolved over billions of years, we urge the Government of India to comprehensively reject the recommendations of this Committee. In the national interest we urge the Government to repeat the exercise ensuring terms of reference are clear and not caged by catch phrases that confound more than clarify, by involving an inter-disciplinary committee consisting of women and men, experienced and expert members, and drawn from various geographies, supported by a deeply democratic process and with sufficient time and space for public consultations nation-wide, so that the outcome would be recalled as a monumental effort that not only secured national interest, but also that of a world precariously edging towards runaway climate change induced impacts.
A copy of the critique of the High Powered Committee Report, entitled “A Non-trivial Threat to India's Ecological and Economic Security”, may be accessed at: www.esgindia.org.
Comments and criticisms are welcomed.
While the potential devastating consequences of the mining components of the project is noted with grave concern, its impacts have not been reviewed here. This is because the Odisha Government has only indicated that the proposed mines are to be in the Kadadhar hills of Sundergarh district, but has not identified the exact location. This report also does not review the economic impacts of the project for this has been comprehensively achieved in the report of the Mining Zone Peoples' Solidarity Group entitled “Iron and Steal: The POSCO-India Story”.
Finally, this is an effort to appreciate the strange nature of environmental decision making in India, as it is also a study of the dissembling of Jairam Ramesh who admittedly “under pressure”2 approved the POSCO project thus supporting the comprehensive violation of India's environmental, forest protection and forest rights acts, amongst others.
The deadline for completion of the Committee's tasks was extended by a month, and the final report was submitted by the Committee to Shri. Prakash Javadekar, Union Minister of State for Environment, Forests and Climate Change with Independent Charge on 18th November 2014.1 The report was not made public at that time. However, it was leaked, and it soon became available on various websites of media and environmental and social action groups. Soon after, an embarrassed Ministry also made the report available on its website.
In our critique of the High Powered Committee Report, we find that the entire exercise has been undertaken in a hurried manner, without sufficient inquiry into the relevant factors, without addressing concerns of a range of communities, especially those which are indigenous and natural resource dependent, and without at all considering the importance of consulting elected representatives from Local Government, Legislatures and the Parliament. This report, thereby, is an outcome of a comprehensively democracy deficit effort, and promotes a schema for environmental reforms, which, if adopted could result in widespread chaos in environmental governance and jurisprudence, and also would result in irreversible damage to the environment, cause widespread loss of natural ecosystems and could further fuel fundamental violation of human rights in a country where discontents over environmental decisions are become increasingly contentious.
There are elements in the Committee's report that are worth taking note of and possibly implementing. But these are few and far between, and a bulk of the Committee's recommendations are based on an extraordinary reliance on the capacity of technical bureaucracy to deliver good environmental governance, on market forces to meet environmental management objectives, on a slew of new regulatory and judicial forums to police the system, without actually making an effort to enquire and justify if such comprehensive makeover in the environmental decision making system is essential at all. Neither does the Committee formulate its tasks clearly, nor does it make any effort to clearly explain the basis of its recommendations. In light of which, what the Committee recommends comes across as a set of confusing proposals which if implemented could confound the environmental governance system quite fundamentally.
With this in view, and in the interest of present and futures generations of the country, and also in securing the extraordinary biodiversity of the region that has evolved over billions of years, we urge the Government of India to comprehensively reject the recommendations of this Committee. In the national interest we urge the Government to repeat the exercise ensuring terms of reference are clear and not caged by catch phrases that confound more than clarify, by involving an inter-disciplinary committee consisting of women and men, experienced and expert members, and drawn from various geographies, supported by a deeply democratic process and with sufficient time and space for public consultations nation-wide, so that the outcome would be recalled as a monumental effort that not only secured national interest, but also that of a world precariously edging towards runaway climate change induced impacts.
A copy of the critique of the High Powered Committee Report, entitled “A Non-trivial Threat to India's Ecological and Economic Security”, may be accessed at: www.esgindia.org.
Comments and criticisms are welcomed.
Presented by
Leo F. Saldanha
Environment Support Group, Bangalore, INDIA
leo@esgindia.org/ www.esgindia.org
at
THE FOURTH SOUTH ASIA JUDICIAL ROUNDTABLE ON ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, Kathmandu Nepal, November 2015