The gov­ern­ment of In­dia is push­ing ahead agen­das in favour of the rich and pow­er­ful, ig­nor­ing rights of in­dige­nous peo­ples, poor and the pop­u­la­tion at large. In the off­ing is the pri­vati­sa­tion of rail­ways, changes in en­vi­ron­men­tal rules and the works. In a re­cent move, the gov­ern­ment has planned to amend the En­vi­ron­ment Im­pact As­sess­ment No­ti­fi­ca­tion 2020. The En­vi­ron­ment wing of the Naam Tami­lar Katchi party in Tamil Nadu, which leads in pro-en­vi­ron­ment cam­paigns in the state, has called for the an­nul­ment of the new draft pro­vi­sions and urges you to join the drive.

WITHOUT SEEK­ING PUB­LIC OPIN­ION, WITH­OUT OB­TAIN­ING THE EN­VI­RON­MEN­TAL CLEAR­ANCE CER­TIFI­CATE,  and with­out sub­mit­ting the En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment Re­port, there is a risk that “road ex­ten­sion”, var­i­ous pro­ject ex­ten­sions, con­struc­tion works will be car­ried out and con­struc­tion of Spe­cial Eco­nomic Zones (SEZs), Ex­port Zones, and Coastal In­dus­trial Zones will take place.

Speak­ing to the World Sikh News, co­or­di­na­tor of the En­vi­ron­ment Wing Ven­nila Thayu­mana­van says, “The Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment has de­cided to make amend­ments to the ex­ist­ing pro­ce­dures spec­i­fied in the En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment (EIA) No­ti­fi­ca­tion, 2006, which will lead to a ma­jor en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion that can­not be re­stored.”

“There is an added risk of cor­po­rates get­ting ap­proved for en­vi­ron­men­tally haz­ardous pro­jects,” she added.

In the name of de­fence and strate­gic in­ter­ests of the coun­try, the draft no­ti­fi­ca­tion ex­cludes pro­jects re­lated to “Strate­gic Plan­ning” where Na­tional Se­cu­rity and de­fence is in­volved from dis­cus­sion and de­bate.

It is any­body’s guess that such blan­ket pro­vi­sion can be mis­in­ter­preted and mis­used in many ways. Nei­ther en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivists nor the pub­lic can make any com­ment or reg­is­ter com­plaint un­less the Union Gov­ern­ment con­sti­tutes an in­quiry com­mit­tee on en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion as per the pro­vi­sions of the amend­ment.

“The En­vi­ron­ment Im­pact As­sess­ment No­ti­fi­ca­tion 2020 is a threat to our en­vi­ron­ment.”

Ven­nila Thayu­mana­van, chief co­or­di­na­tor, NTK En­vi­ron­ment Wing

Ven­nila Thayu­mana­van says, “Since such amend­ments are a threat to our en­vi­ron­ment. Naam Tami­lar Katchi’s En­vi­ron­men­tal Wing ve­he­mently op­poses the Draft En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment No­ti­fi­ca­tion, 2020 and de­mands that the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment should not im­ple­ment it in any way.”

Naam Tami­lar Katchi has called upon en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists and the cit­i­zenry to call for the with­drawal of this draft that will lead to dis­as­ter in the name of de­vel­op­ment.

Let us join hands for the great work of pro­tect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment!

A draft cam­paign let­ter, cit­ing 7 co­gent rea­sons for op­pos­ing the draft pro­pos­als, ad­dressed to the Min­istry of En­vi­ron­ment, Forests and Cli­mate Change (MoE­FCC) is re­pro­duced be­low. You are in­vited to use the text be­low, ap­pend your name at the end of the let­ter and send it by email to eia2020-moe­fcc@gov.in

To
The Sec­re­tary
For­est and Cli­mate Change
Union Gov­ern­ment of In­dia
New Delhi

Sir

Sub­ject: Seek­ing with­drawal of the Draft En­vi­ron­ment Im­pact As­sess­ment No­ti­fi­ca­tion 2020

The Cen­tral Min­istry has pro­posed a change in ex­ist­ing En­vi­ron­ment Im­pact As­sess­ment processes (EIA No­ti­fi­ca­tion, 2006) through a draft EIA No­ti­fi­ca­tion, 2020. The pro­posed no­ti­fi­ca­tion will de­stroy the process of en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and af­fect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment ir­re­versibly, also mak­ing it eas­ier for the cor­po­rates to get en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ances for their pro­jects. Hence, We the peo­ple Tamil­nadu, op­pose the draft En­vi­ron­ment Im­pact As­sess­ment No­ti­fi­ca­tion, 2020, and re­quest you to with­draw the same.

Amidst the pan­demic sit­u­a­tion, it is im­proper to take de­ci­sions that will have an ir­re­versible im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment. How­ever, the Union Min­istry is keen on mak­ing changes in En­vi­ron­ment rules and grant­ing clear­ances.

It is ev­i­dent from the fact that over 30 pro­jects, lo­cated in some of In­di­a’s most bio­di­verse forests have been ur­gently cleared or taken up for clear­ance in on­line meet­ings dur­ing the lock­down (April 23).

Site in­spec­tions are a cru­cial com­po­nent of pro­ject eval­u­a­tion and are dif­fi­cult dur­ing a pan­demic. Min­istry ap­pears to be re­ly­ing only on dig­i­tal doc­u­ments up­loaded by the pro­ject de­vel­op­ers. Even more sur­pris­ingly these pro­jects have been cleared at a time when Covid-19 has re­vealed dra­mat­i­cally how se­ri­ously the loss of for­est land and bio­di­ver­sity can in­crease zoonotic dis­eases.

En­vi­ron­men­tal­ists also have raised their voice and wrote to En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter re­gard­ing how for­est and en­vi­ron­ment clear­ances were be­ing granted across In­dia dur­ing the lock­down.

On that note, shock­ingly, the Min­istry has put out a draft no­ti­fi­ca­tion for pub­lic com­ments amidst global eco­nomic and pub­lic health emer­gency when there is re­stricted pub­lic move­ment.

Ma­jor Is­sues:

1. The new amend­ment poses a se­ri­ous threat to the en­vi­ron­ment and there are some ar­eas of con­cern like grant­ing post-facto clear­ances to In­dus­tries and leav­ing aside them with only fines, in case of any vi­o­la­tions.

2. For sev­eral pro­jects, the whole process of EIA is made sim­pler and fails to meet the stan­dards of ba­sic en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions. How­ever, in an or­der on April 1, the Supreme Court held that “ex post facto en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ances” are con­trary to law. It said: “En­vi­ron­ment law can­not coun­te­nance the no­tion of an ex post facto clear­ance. This would be con­trary to both the pre­cau­tion­ary prin­ci­ple as well as the need for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment”.

3. A pub­lic hear­ing has been ex­empted to many in­dus­tries (those pro­duc­ing acids, paints, fer­til­iz­ers, pes­ti­cides, etc.) lo­cated in No­ti­fied In­dus­trial Zone. This will cre­ate se­ri­ous prob­lems in ar­eas that de­pend en­tirely on ground and river wa­ter for agri­cul­tural us­age.
4. Pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion has also been ex­empted from a list of lin­ear pro­jects. Pro­jects such as roads and pipelines in bor­der ar­eas will not re­quire any pub­lic hear­ing. The ‘bor­der area’ is de­fined as “area falling within 100 kilo­me­ters aer­ial dis­tance from the Line of Ac­tual Con­trol with bor­der­ing coun­tries of In­dia.” That would cover much of the North­east, the re­gion with the coun­try’s rich­est bio­di­ver­sity. Ex­emp­tion from pub­lic hear­ing goes against In­ter­na­tional en­vi­ron­men­tal law and agree­ments.

5. In­creased va­lid­ity of the en­vi­ron­ment clear­ance for min­ing pro­jects and river val­ley pro­jects from 30 years cur­rently to 50 years and, 10 years cur­rently to 15 years re­spec­tively, thus in­creas­ing the risk of ir­re­versible en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial, and health con­se­quences on ac­count of the pro­ject re­main­ing un­no­ticed for long.

6. Through the draft, it is enough for the in­dus­tries to pro­vide an an­nual en­vi­ron­men­tal com­pli­ance re­port rather than half-yearly re­ports. Past ex­pe­ri­ences show that in­dus­tries have con­tin­ued to pro­vide data that are false and in­ac­cu­rate. Seek­ing an an­nual re­port pro­vides an op­por­tu­nity for the in­dus­tries to fur­ther un­der­es­ti­mate any so­cio-en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues aris­ing in their pro­jects.

7. The Pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion process is di­luted. The pe­riod for the pub­lic to sub­mit their views and re­sponses dur­ing a pub­lic hear­ing for any ap­pli­ca­tion seek­ing En­vi­ron­ment clear­ance has been re­duced from 30 days to 20 days. It is aimed at deny­ing the proper op­por­tu­nity to record the ob­jec­tions of the peo­ple of the re­gion. The var­i­ous pro­vi­sions of the draft are aimed at fa­cil­i­tat­ing the gov­ern­men­t’s doc­trine of “ease of do­ing busi­ness”.

Hence, we would like to re­it­er­ate that it is our gen­er­a­tion that will be a vic­tim of the dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects of these twisted and di­luted laws like the new EIA draft.

In this age of high pol­lu­tion lev­els in our cities, we need to strengthen the EIA 2006 in­stead of al­low­ing amend­ments that will di­lute the rules and en­cour­age en­vi­ron­men­tal vi­o­la­tions. The cur­rent draft lacks un­der­stand­ing of the ad­verse ef­fects of ac­tiv­i­ties like dis­tur­bances in eco-sen­si­tive zones, ex­ten­sive min­ings.

The said no­ti­fi­ca­tion was re­leased on 23rd March 2020, sur­pris­ingly right be­fore the day of na­tion­wide lock­down. There has been no wide pub­lic­ity given to the same ex­cept be­ing up­loaded on the web­site.

The Covid-19 pan­demic has been a time to stay safe and pro­tect one­self. Hence, the gov­ern­ment must un­der­stand it is not the right time to make amend­ments in EIA No­ti­fi­ca­tion for its as­pi­ra­tion of do­ing busi­ness.

We sin­cerely hope that the En­vi­ron­ment Min­istry will en­cour­age in­formed pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion as com­mit­ted through Prin­ci­ple 10 of the Rio De­c­la­ra­tion and the prin­ci­ple of Nat­ural Jus­tice. The EIA can be used to bring In­dia out of the Covid-19 pan­demic as an en­vi­ron­men­tally aware coun­try through a green re­cov­ery that strength­ens the role of en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cial pro­tec­tion of all peo­ple and na­ture in­stead of jus­ti­fy­ing the pre­sent forms of harm­ful de­vel­op­ment.

So, we re­quest you to kindly with­draw the Draft EIA No­ti­fi­ca­tion – 2020, right now.

Thank you.

Sin­cerely