Union Budget 2022 was appreciated by several experts and institutions because of its focus on the climate crisis and the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Many said that finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman made the first reference to climate action two minutes into her speech, which is unprecedented and shows that the government is serious about it.
Describing the vision of the government, Sitharaman said “Promoting digital economy and fintech, technology-enabled development, energy transition, and climate action” will be key focus
Union Budget 2022 was appreciated by several experts and institutions because of its focus on the climate crisis and the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Many said that finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman made the first reference to climate action two minutes into her speech, which is unprecedented and shows that the government is serious about it.
Describing the vision of the government, Sitharaman said “Promoting digital economy and fintech, technology-enabled development, energy transition, and climate action” will be key focus areas.
Among the key actions announced by the minister during her Budget speech is an additional allocation of ₹19,500 crore for Production Linked Incentive (PLI) for the manufacture of high-efficiency solar modules to fully integrated manufacturing units that can transition from polysilicon to solar PV modules.
This is to facilitate domestic manufacturing for the implementation of 280 GW of installed solar capacity by 2030. The finance minister also announced sovereign Green Bonds under the government’s overall market borrowings in 2022-23, which will be used to mobilise resources for green or climate-friendly infrastructure.
While these features will help India chart a path to its energy transition, there is no mention of how the country will gradually move away from coal. The Centre for Policy Research, in its analysis of the Budget, has highlighted that the Budget is silent on a just transition to a low-carbon economy.
“While India needs coal in the short term, we also need to prepare for the future. Starting a process of thinking about a long-term ‘just transition’ in coal-dependent states that focused on alternative jobs and livelihoods, would have sent an important signal. Moreover, despite the Finance Minister’s nudge in past budgets for retirement and environmental compliance of old and polluting coal power plants, there has been no action at the state level. The budget missed an opportunity to create enabling incentives for state level action,” the analysis said.
Some other features of the Budget could also have long term and large-scale environmental impacts. The implementation of the Ken-Betwa river link project will be taken up at an estimated cost of ₹44,605, Sitharaman said during her Budget speech on February 3.
The project is aimed at providing irrigation benefits to 9.08 lakh hectares of agricultural land, drinking water supply for 62 lakh people, 103 MW of hydro, and 27 MW of solar power, she said.
The allocation of ₹4,300 crore in 2021-22 and ₹1,400 crore in 2022-23 has been already made for this project.
Draft detailed project report (DPRs) of five river link projects — Damanganga-Pinjal, Par-Tapi-Narmada, Godavari-Krishna, Krishna-Pennar and Pennar-Cauvery have also been finalised. Once a consensus is reached among the beneficiary states, the Centre will provide support for implementation, Sitharaman said.
The Ken-Betwa river linking project was accorded stage II forest clearance by the environment ministry on March 6, last year. As per the form submitted by the Union ministry of water resources for forest clearance, the estimated cost of the project was ₹137,083 and the area of forest land to be diverted is 968 ha.
A total of over 1.6 lakh trees are required to be removed for the project. A report by the Supreme Court-appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC) had observed in September 2019 that the first phase of the Ken Betwa River linking project could threaten Panna Tiger Reserve’s status as a source area for tigers, or an area with a high density of the big cats. “The forest land involved in submergence is a unique ecosystem of morphological significance with unique and rich biodiversity in the region and which ecosystem cannot be recreated,” the report said.
The government should tread with caution on river linking projects. Before the government embarks on these river link projects, it is important to get a safety and environmental assessment done by the best scientific institutions in the country.
In another move that has raised concerns among environmental and legal experts, Sitharaman announced that a single-window portal, Parivesh, for all green clearances was launched in 2018 which will now be expanded.
“It has been instrumental in reducing the time required for approvals significantly. The scope of this portal will now be expanded, to provide information to the applicants. Based on the location of units, information about specific approvals will be provided. It will enable application for all four approvals through a single form, and tracking of the process through Centralized Processing Centre-Green (CPC-Green),” Sitharaman said in her speech. The four approvals are forests, environment, wildlife and coastal regulation zone.
The Centre has said earlier that it plans to incentivise states through a star rating system based on how quickly they accord environmental clearances to various infrastructure and development projects. The Union environment ministry issued an office memorandum (OM) to this effect on January 17 stating that the environment ministry has taken several initiatives for streamlining the environmental clearance process and reducing the time taken to grant clearances.
In fact, the average time taken to grant EC has been reduced considerably to 75 days against the time stipulated in the Environment Impact Assessment notification 2006, the OM said.
A single window portal if implemented has to be an efficient system which helps scrutinise the environmental footprint of every infrastructure project. The environmental and societal impacts of each project are different and cannot be standardised in a single form. The environment ministry may have to put guidelines in place to ensure the single-window system is not a standard clearance mechanism for all projects. That may jeopardise India’s climate goals and its standing as a climate leader.
From the climate crisis to air pollution, from questions of the development-environment tradeoffs to India’s voice in international negotiations on the environment, HT’s Jayashree Nandi brings her deep domain knowledge in a weekly column
The views expressed are personal
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