Echoing green

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced plans to set up an independent regulator for the environment, one that could “lead to a complete change in the process of granting environmental clearances” without degenerating into the “hated licence-permit raj”. Speaking at the valedictory session of an international seminar on global environment and disaster management along with Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia, the PM spoke of how growth and sustainability were tightly braided concepts (see the Op-ed Page). The National Environment Appraisal and Monitoring Authority in the works would be “staffed by dedicated professionals, it will work on a full-time basis to evolve better and more objective standards of scrutiny,” stressed the PM.


This too is an idea whose time has come. We know, to our cost, that a scattershot approach to environmental regulation, marked by arbitrariness and a disregard for timelines can cause investment to stall. A centralised, ministry-driven approach can end up distorting the project, mostly because of the sheer volume of work and partly because of smaller self-interested ends. Though there was a stated aim to unbundle environmental regulation depending on potential impact and set up more state-level appraisal committees, and make it more time-bound and professional, those have collapsed because of the absurd situation where, de facto, those who put the proposed project together assess its environmental impact, and a faraway committee judges these reports and grants conditional clearances, asking it to adhere to further norms if required, which it cannot itself monitor. What’s more, the environmental agenda has often careened one way or the other depending on the immediate political need.
That is precisely what an independent, professional regulator is meant to rescue it from — approve each project on purely technical grounds, on pre-set criteria — removing the element of discretion, or merely the appearance of bias. Having an accredited pool of consultants vet each project and verify the project’s claims as well as ramping up manpower and resources for this new authority and building in ongoing controls would certainly overhaul environmental regulation as we now know it. Appeals could also flow to an independent tribunal instead of painfully making their way through the regular judicial process. Given the need to manage a full-throttle economy as well as protect our ecological interests, this reform is crucial