Our broken system of clearances

News:  Recently, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change has said that it will rank the state environmental impact assessment authorities based on the speed at which environmental approvals are given.

What is the issue with such ranking?

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How the EIA process of assessment has been systematically destroyed over the years?

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) started in 1994. The development projects were few at that time and the process remained unchallenged. During the 2000s, building projects due to their huge environmental footprints were also included in the system of scrutiny.

But the problem was that the system was not upgraded to handle the huge volume of “building” projects, which led to delays, high transaction costs, and corruption.

That’s why in 2006, the ministry decentralized the process and outsourced the work to states by setting up the state environmental impact assessment authorities. Different Categories were created, but there were overlaps and discretion. Hence, the quality of scrutiny did not improve.

What is the issues with EIA exercise?

First, the project proposer pays the consultants to do the EIA.

The terms of reference (ToR) are approved by the Central or state environmental impact assessment authority. Category A projects come to the Centre and Category B projects go to the state. Then, the state authority decides if it is B1 (projects requiring detailed assessments) or B2 (that do not require detailed assessments).

The committee can approve the ToR, ask for more information, or reject it. The draft EIA is then put out for public consultation. A detailed process is in place for holding the public hearing. Then, the appraisal committee has to scrutinize the draft, ask for more information and accept it with conditions or reject it.

Why EIA has become a useless exercise?

One, projects are rarely rejected. Between July 2015 and August 2020, out of the 3,100 projects submitted, only 3 per cent were not recommended.

Also, these projects proposers can come again with more information. The committees “clear” the project, and to protect themselves they put some conditions that are never monitored.

Two, the committees are not held responsible for the quality of decisions after clearance. The monitoring is left to the understaffed regional offices of the ministry.

Three, state pollution control boards are not empowered to monitor impacts because clearance is done under the Environmental Protection Act and not under the laws governing air or water. Hence, there is duplication and lack of scrutiny.

Source: This post is based on the article “Our broken system of clearances” published in Business Standard on 7^th Feb 2022.