Red signals on green norms: Controversy over draft EIA notification

The controversy over the draft rules for environment clearances has created more heat than light

On August 18, the Madras High Court rejected a petition from Sterlite Copper, from the mining conglomerate Vedanta’s stable, to reopen its plant in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi, closed since 2018 for its failure to meet pollution control norms. “Economic considerations can have no role to play while deciding the sustainability of a highly polluting industry,” a two-judge bench observed. 

These remarks are significant when set against the current controversy between the government and activists over the draft rules for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), an exercise that has been mandatory for expansion, modernisation or new projects since 1994. The new norms involve significant relaxations (see box: Sustainable controversies) designed to improve the ease of doing business, a major item on the Modi government’s agenda to attract investment.

Corporate India has mostly not publicly commented on the new draft notification from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), circulated in March to update a 2006 notification. But industrialists are unlikely to have major objections. 

Take the move scrapping public hearings for oil and gas and shale exploration projects. “This is a commendable initiative. It will help compress the time to find hydrocarbon molecules and bring them quickly to the market in a safe and environmentally responsible manner,” said Manish Maheshwari, chairman, Invenire Energy Group of Companies, which acquired Tata Petrodyne last year. “Aggregated yields from a series of such initiatives shall certainly make a material contribution in our journey towards Aatma Nirbhar Bharat,” he added. 

The MoEFCC received almost 2 million comments after it extended the deadline for feedback from June 30 to August 11. But in an interview, Prakash Javadekar, Union minister for MoEFCC, said only “5,000-10,000 of the total comments have new points”. This may mean that the Centre could reject thousands of applications for the government to extend the deadline for feedback submission because stakeholders in remote and industrial areas and eco-sensitive zones could not participate owing to the Covid lockdown. 

 

 

The door to further discussion appeared to close when R P Gupta, secretary, MoEFCC, said on August 17 that “there is no requirement for discussion. That will open another Pandora’s box. Then nothing will happen in future. Everything can be stifled.” 

The controversy took an ugly turn after the MoEFCC banned three NGOs for allegedly spamming Javadekar’s mailbox with demands to restart the feedback process for those in remote industrial areas and eco-sensitive zones. The websites were restored but the incident brought the issue front and centre of public attention. Political leaders of opposition parties including Congress MP Jairam Ramesh and current state environment minister of Maharashtra Aditya Thackeray have called for scrapping the process. 

Jairam Ramesh who chairs the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Environment, has been at the forefront of opposition. As environment minister in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), Ramesh had attracted India Inc’s ire for designating swathes of areas known to be rich in mineral reserves as “no-go areas”, a confrontation that saw him replaced, after which some norms were selectively relaxed. 

This was the point Javadekar made in an interview to Business Standard. On Ramesh’s objections to scrapping EIA for project expansion, he pointed to the 2006 norms, notified under the UPA, which did away with the need for public hearings for buildings up to 150,000 square metres. “What we have done is to reduce this facility up to 50,000 sq metres only. And we are proposing that only green buildings will get this concession up to 150,000 square metres,” he said.

On Ramesh’s objections to post-facto approvals for violators, Javedekar said in a public statement, “Previously such violators were allowed to regularise on a permanent basis via Office Memorandums issued in 2010”. 

Ramesh did not respond to emailed queries seeking responses to Javadekar’s statements. 

One major point of contention is the exclusion of public hearings in projects under the “B2” category (see box). A MoEFCC official explained that the idea is to make the clearance process less complex for manufacturers. “Companies will have to submit an Environmental Management Plan, and if the expansion is more than 25 per cent of production capacity then EIA will be needed. Expansion projects above a 10 per cent increase will require the recommendation of the Environment Appraisal Committee. We are allowing expansion without a public hearing only in cases where the expansion does not lead to an increase in the pollution load.” 

On the reduction of the notice period from 30 to 20 days, a senior MoEFCC official said it was prompted by the fact that “information flow in 2020 is faster, so people can access information and come up with their suggestions at a faster pace.” 

Though these explanations sound logical, several environmentalists and policy advocates say the new EIA draft does not align with commitments India made at the Paris Climate Change Summit. “No systems or processes have been prescribed in the draft notification that would require the regulatory authority or the appraisal committee to consider questions such as whether a proposed project would emit GHGs, whether the project site is vulnerable to climate change impacts (such as in coastal areas), whether the adaptive capacity of a vulnerable area is being adversely affected and so on,” said Shibani Ghosh, an environmental lawyer and Fellow, Centre for Policy Research. 

At the same time, legal cases could complicate matters. Last week, the Supreme Court directed the Centre — two days after the deadline — to publish the draft in regional languages. Then the Karnataka High Court asked the Centre to publish the draft in Kannada and has stayed the publication of the final notification till September 7. 

Meanwhile, the MoEFCC has appointed the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) to scrutinise the comments and suggestions. After this, the final draft will be placed before a committee headed by S R Wate, former NEERI director, for further scrutiny and experts from various sectors would also participate. Several environmentalists have pointed out that appointing its own agency for examine the norms undermines the public consultation process.