Budget 2017 no boost for climate change? Govt focuses little on environment
Budget 2017 brought little cheer to those who cherish the environment and forests as Union finance minister Arun Jaitley made no special announcements for the sectors apart from ushering in the second phase of the national solar mission.
Budget 2017 brought little cheer to those who cherish the environment and forests as Union finance minister Arun Jaitley made no special announcements for the sectors apart from ushering in the second phase of the national solar mission.
A farmer Kusumben Parmar works near solar panels, which help to pump water to irrigate her fields in the village of Dhundi, some 90km from Ahmedabad. (AFP File Photo)
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Jaitley announced that around 7,000 railway stations will get power from solar panels in the medium term and 2017 will see the initiation of second phase of solar park development for creating additional generation capacity of 20,000 MW.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the Global Solar Alliance at Paris climate conference in 2015, with around 30 countries becoming part of it in Marakesh a year later. The plan was to create India as a manufacturing and research hub for solar technologies that can feed power to the developing world.
Many environmentalists were expecting a big boost for climate change in the budget as environment minister Arun Madhav Dave in December had announced that India will start preparing for implementing the Paris agreement from 2017.
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“The budget has failed to even acknowledge the problem of pollution, which simply indicates that environment is not a priority concern for this regime,” Centre for Science and Environment, a policy think tank in Delhi, said in a statement. “While the budgetary allocation for rural employment, agricultural insurance and farm ponds etc seems to be good, the challenge would be implementation.”
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“The budget has failed to even acknowledge the problem of pollution, which simply indicates that environment is not a priority concern for this regime,” Centre for Science and Environment, a policy think tank in Delhi, said in a statement. “While the budgetary allocation for rural employment, agricultural insurance and farm ponds etc seems to be good, the challenge would be implementation.”
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Although climate change was not part of Jaitley’s speech, the allocation for the environment ministry has been increased by about Rs 300 crore to Rs 2,657 crore in 2017-18.
A ministry official said that a good amount of additional funds would be spent on preparing plans to implement the Paris agreement that comes into force from 2020 and creating capability of the states to handle climate chang-induced disasters.
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Mention of the green sector was restricted to pilot plants for environment-friendly disposal of solid waste and conversion of biodegradable waste to energy at New Delhi and Jaipur railway stations.
Officials said that increased allocation for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Gurantee scheme could improve management of water resources and forestry.
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.
