{"id":31420,"date":"2018-10-27T13:29:45","date_gmt":"2018-10-27T07:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=31420"},"modified":"2018-10-27T13:29:45","modified_gmt":"2018-10-27T07:59:45","slug":"why-supreme-court-action-in-goa-is-nudge-to-honour-rights-to-commons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/why-supreme-court-action-in-goa-is-nudge-to-honour-rights-to-commons\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Supreme Court action in Goa is nudge to honour rights to commons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/why-sc-action-in-goa-is-nudge-to-honour-rights-to-commons-5056649\/\"><b>Why Supreme Court action in Goa is nudge to honour rights to commons<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>Context:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Supreme Court <\/span><b>quashed all iron ore mining leases in Goa<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, two days before the deadline for public feedback to the draft National Mineral Policy (NMP) 2018.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The court had mandated the National Mineral Policy on September, 2017 saying the older, <\/span><b>2008 policy was not being enforced<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> perhaps due to the involvement of very powerful vested interests or a failure of nerve.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Background:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Back in <\/span><b>October 2012<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the top court had suspended iron ore mining and transportation in Goa, following the report of the Justice M B Shah Commission on illegal mining.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>In April that year<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the court had ordered a 10% levy on the sale value of ore to set up a Goa Permanent Fund (GPF) for protection of intergenerational equity.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So when the SC directed the Centre to <\/span><b>revise NMP 2008<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, it was looking for a fresh, more effective, meaningful and implementable policy.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>What draft says and doesn\u2019t say:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The draft National Mineral Policy 2018, made public on January 10, calls for a <\/span><b>long term export policy for the mineral sector.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It aims to bring <\/span><b>stability and incentivize investments in large-scale<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> commercial mining.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And proposes to offer mineral exploration companies the right of first refusal when mines explored by them are auctioned.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But there is <\/span><b>not much in line with global best practices<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), whistleblower protection, Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES), etc.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The draft also <\/span><b>does not spell out the strategy to protect Intergenerational Equity,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> a doctrine that the Economic Survey 2016-17 has acknowledged while referring to the apex court\u2019s orders.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>The miners\u2019 objections:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mining companies have <\/span><b>challenged the creation of the General Provident Fund (GPF).<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They argued that with the <\/span><b>District Mineral Foundations (DMFs)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> aimed at intergenerational equity and livelihood support for families affected by mining already in place, <\/span><b>the GPF amounted to a double levy.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>The global benchmarks:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Norway and 50 other countries\/sub-nations<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> have created permanent funds based on extracting economic rent from oil and other natural resources.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In North America, <\/span><b>Alberta and Alaska<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> set up Oil Funds in the mid-1970s.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alberta and Alaska <\/span><b>used the bulk of revenues<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to cut or abolish taxes, and allocated only a fraction to their Funds.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Chile s<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">et up its Copper Stabilisation Fund in 1985. During the 1997-98 financial crisis, it channelled $ 200 million from the Fund to the national economy.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Botswana <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">established the Pula Fund in 1994 to save part of the income from diamond exports for future generations.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2008, <\/span><b>Mongolia <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">created a Human Development Fund, making every citizen eligible to own an equal share of the national mineral wealth.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Fundamentals of intergenerational equity:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The fundamentals of intergenerational equity demand some nonnegotiable principles: zero-waste and zero-loss mining, judicious capping, conserving reserves, minimum environmental damage under the polluter-pays principle, free informed consent of the mining-affected, funds for future and, most importantly, transparency.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why Supreme Court action in Goa is nudge to honour rights to commons Context: The Supreme Court quashed all iron ore mining leases in Goa, two days before the deadline for public feedback to the draft National Mineral Policy (NMP) 2018. The court had mandated the National Mineral Policy on September, 2017 saying the older,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/why-supreme-court-action-in-goa-is-nudge-to-honour-rights-to-commons\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why Supreme Court action in Goa is nudge to honour rights to commons<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704632210},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}