No one-time clearance, says green ministry

The environment ministry has opposed the suggestion of commerce ministry of one time environment clearance to manufacturing zones, proposed in the proposed manufacturing policy, rather than individual industries although it has agreed to fast tracking of the clearance process.

Updated on: Jul 27, 2011, 02:27:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The environment ministry has opposed the suggestion of commerce ministry of one time environment clearance to manufacturing zones, proposed in the proposed manufacturing policy, rather than individual industries although it has agreed to fast tracking of the clearance process.

For the environment ministry, which regulates environmental impact of the projects, giving the exemption sought would mean a key change in the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification of 2006.

The EIA notification of 2006 gives power to the state and the central governments to clear individual projects depending on their cost and land area. Former environment minister Jairam Ramesh brought a key change in the notification by making seeking approval for expansion mandatory.

But, the commerce ministry wants relaxation in both these norms. It has asked the environment ministry to give environment clearance on basis of a comprehensive EIA for entire manufacturing zone of more than 500 hectares. It also does not want the industry to come back to the ministry in case individual industries want to expand.

The ministry believes that if the exemption sought under the new policy are accepted the EIA notification will have to be changed drastically and can dilute the stringent environmental rule.

In addition, the ministry says that it would become difficult for them to refuse a comprehensive EIA for companies developing different types of projects in one project area.

For example, Posco in Orissa is setting up a steel factory, a captive power plant and a port in close proximity to each other. Instead of giving one environment clearance to all three, each segment got separate clearances. It was because the ministry has separate Expert Appraisal Committees (EAC) for different sectors.

The relaxation, if accepted, would also mean restructuring the entire EAC format.

The issue was discussed between environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan and commerce minister Anand Sharma last week, in which the ministry agreed to set up a mechanism for fast tracking environment clearance for manufacturing zones. But, on changing the EIA the ministry sought more time to respond.

In a parallel exercise, the Planning Commission is also discussing the ways to dilute the environment clearance process for manufacturing zones. It has constituted a working group having representatives of industry and government officials to suggest mechanism to relax environmental norms for the policy.

A senior commission official said the working group have moved forward on building a consensus on new environmental regime for the manufacturing policy, which can then be extended to other economic growth oriented industry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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