Our broken system of environmental clearance

News 

Environment Ministry’s move to rank state environmental impact assessment authorities based on their speed of environmental approval can have negative consequences for the environment. 

What can be the negative consequences of this move? 

Read here. 

How has the EIA regime in India has evolved? 

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) started way back in 1994. Although building projects were brought into its ambit in 2000 but system was never upgraded to handle the huge volume of such projects. This has often led to delays and high transaction costs. 

In the year 2006, Process was decentralized and the work was outsourced to states.

However, despite going through changes the quality of scrutiny has not improved and development projects are not more environmentally compliant. 

What are the problems in India’s EIA regime? 

The project proponent is expected to pay consultants to do the EIA which creates a conflict of interest. 

The projects are rarely rejected, between July 2015 and August 2020, of the 3,100 projects submitted, only 3 per cent were not recommended. Even these have the option of coming back with more information and get the clearance. 

There is not a proper follow up on clearances as monitoring is done by regional offices of Environment ministry which are many a times lacking manpower to do it. 

Source– This post is based on the article “Our broken system of environmental clearance” published in Down to earth on 27th Jan 2022.