India warned against neglecting environment

Does the economic growth of the country match its environmental growth? A report of the World Bank, jointly authored with the Ministry of Environment and Forests, comes with the message for India to pause and consider environmental sustainability before moving on the fast track of economic development.

Coming along with the Inter-governental Panel on Climate Change and its grim forecast of doom in the form of natural calamities and food shortages, the World Bank report today finds India's economic activity doubling that of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in its density by 2020.

It says this has frightening implications for the environment of the country. Environmental sustainability is likely to become the next greatest challenge along India's development path, it says.

The density of economic activity is a heightened demand for and pressures on land, water, air, soil and forests. And in India it is to become the highest in the world in 2020, the report says.

This will mean more pressure on an already stressed environment and natural resources.It says that regulatory instruments are needed and those that are already there have to be made effective.

It points towards participatory and parternship models of development and environmental growth. It talks of partnerships with the community, NGOs and corporate.

Commenting on the report, Dilip Biswas who formerly headed the Central Pollution Control Board said that India had a readymade model for participatory and partnership models provided by the panchayat system through the 73rd and 74th amendments of the Constitution.

If these are enforced then environment, the rivers, the irrigation, the power, land, and all these matters would be the jurisdiction of the local community and none else.

This is the pattern which is followed in developed countries but in India distant bodies like Central and State pollution Control BBoards continue to make futile efforts to enforce environment laws, Biswas who was the advisor for the report said.

Environmentalist Shekhar Singh said that unless economic growth is not linked with environmental growth, then GDP may lose quite a few percentages.

If with 9 per cent GDP, the environment growth was 4 per cent then what is left? he asks. On the linkage with OECD level of economic activity, he asks: "Does anyone know how much garbage the OECD countries produce? Double that for India by 2020."