From a gas leak in Bhopal where over 500,000 people were exposed to toxic gas in 1984 to a natural gas blowout in Bhagjan, Assam which burned for around 6 months in 2020 — these incidents and similar ones could’ve been avoided or at least mitigated with regular environmental assessments.
What is an EIA?
An Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) makes a scientific estimate of the environmental cost of a project to ensure development with minimum degradation.
A brief history:
The draft being revamped after nearly 14 years and released during a global pandemic are two amongst the many criticisms the government faced.
Deadline, Translation & Websites
The deadline for public opinion was set on June 10 as per the 60-day public notice period according to the Environmental (Protection) Rules. Thousands of public representations sought an extension of the deadline to August 11th on account of the global pandemic, availability of the draft in only 2 of the 22 languages recognized by the constitution, and inaccessibility of the draft in the State Pollution Control Board websites.
However, environment minister Prakash Javadekar who is also the minister of heavy industries set June 30 as the new deadline, limiting the extension to 20 days. This decision was not received well and activists moved to court.
The Delhi High Court extended the public deadline to August 11 and directed the environment ministry to translate the draft in all 22 official languages and upload it to the respective pollution control websites.
What happened next?
Neither did they translate the draft in all the languages nor did they upload it to all the pollution control websites. The ministry filed a plea saying that the translation to all the official languages is unnecessary — which is discriminatory because language barriers can exclude people from decision-making processes.
While calling out the ministry for giving excuses in order to avoid translating the draft, young people from different climate action groups took it upon themselves to translate the key points to almost 35 languages by crowdsourcing showing the government how it’s done, said Tamanna Sengupta, an environmental science post-graduate currently working as an environmental consultant.
The Implementation Body of the committee is well defined compared to the previous notification with the composition of the state & central body and their eligibility criteria given in detail.
Centralization vs Decentralization: A centralized body of experts and government officials will take over the scrutinizing aspect of the process instead of the state-level officials (i.e) a more centralized approach. However, decentralization of power gives more autonomy to the states which has proven to improve enforcement of environmental regulations.
Mansi Rathore, a civil engineering graduate and a core member of “Youth for Climate India”, said that young people prefer decentralization of power in industries.
What changed from the previous EIA?
Data taken from the official 83-page document for the draft released by the ministry.
The changes from the above table show how ease of business is prioritized — by decreasing the duration for public opinions and increasing the duration of validity periods and requirement reports.
Other key changes:
- Recategorization of projects: Projects of certain sectors have been recategorized to remove some levels of scrutiny.
- Public complaints: This notification exempts a long list of projects from consultations and violation reports from the public.
- Post-facto approval: Allows projects to apply for clearance post-set-up even if it is in violation of the Environment Protection Act thus legalizing projects that have not been approved previously.
- Expansion: EIA report is not needed in case of modernization or expansion when the intended production increase is 25% and exempt from public consultation up to 50%
- Risk to protected areas: The radius within which a project cannot be constructed has been reduced — risking the country’s forests and water sources.
- Economically sensitive areas: This declares some areas as ‘economically sensitive areas’ without public hearings or opinions from stakeholders.
Dissent amidst Disease:
People expressed dissent in their own ways against the EIA 2020 for its regressive changes. In-person protests were also organized following social distancing protocols due to the pandemic.
Dissent is blocked?
Many environmental action groups ran campaigns on their websites that had email samples objecting to the draft which can be used to send it to the ministry. The websites of three environmental action groups — Fridays For Future India, Let India Breathe, There is No Earth B have been blocked. The Delhi Police cited UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) for blocking the website. Internet Freedom Foundation filed RTIs (Right to Information) on the censorship of these websites.
The government did not reveal the number of objection mails, said Tamanna when she filed an RTI for the same. Although we don’t know the exact number, it is estimated that around 2 million objection mails have been sent to the ministry.
In August 2020, the ministry said they needed time to study the issues and suggestions raised. Prakash Javadekar in an audio message said campaigning against a draft that is not the final notification is unnecessary and premature. Fast forward to now, there has been no proper response to the criticism as of now, although there have been circulars released with vague responses. Like the rest of us, Tamanna is hoping that the government would sit with a team of experts and redo the draft again.
Regardless of the new EIA notification, projects are being approved left, right, and center which has erupted protests in various parts of India. Some of them are:
New policies, changes are required and transformation is necessary. However, like the Environment Impact Assessment Draft (March 2020), National Education Policy (July 2020), 3 Farm Laws (September 2020) — proposing policies without public opinion, without listening to the experts and stakeholders will make it “hard for the public to consume this intense throwing of policies back-to-back”, said Mansi.
Even as I’m about to finish writing this, a proposal to urbanize Little Andaman Islands by building airports, ship terminals, and other things that violate a lot of rights is in the works.
Ending this with two significant questions I like to ask myself when I come across developmental projects:
- Development, but at what cost? (Also, the question an EIA should answer with equity, considering even those in the future generations)
- Who is benefitting from this project?
Credits:
- Ideation, conceptualization, and content by Maithri, a final year computer science engineering student based in Chennai.
- Visualization and design by Agassi, a game tester in Bangalore.
- Tamanna Sengupta is an Environmental Science post-graduate student currently working as an environmental consultant in Pune. Tamanna was also heading the research team in Fridays For Future, India.
- Mansi Rathore is a civil engineering graduate currently a fellow at the Gandhi Fellowship. She resides in Jaipur and is a core member of “Youth For Climate India”.
