JOIN USAlign governance to sustainability
The Union Budget’s environmental priorities reflect a dichotomy and divergence between its stated priorities of improving the efficiency of environmental clearances with its desire to create a committed environmental bureaucracy and meet net-zero targets.
In January 2022, the Supreme Court asked the government if it plans to introduce an Indian Environmental Service (IES) based on the 2014 TSR Subramanian Report and a petition filed arguing that environmental clearances require special expertise that a regular bureaucrat may not possess. While a parliamentary standing committee rejected the report since it would dilute environmental standards, the government never acted on it. The status of the IES is in limbo.
This is not the first time a special and dedicated arm of the government has been proposed. Earlier, in the 186th Report of the Law Commission of India, it had been suggested that India required a dedicated judicial system to oversee environmental disputes. This report finally resulted in the National Green Tribunal.
India is in a series of transitions — from an agrarian to a service-oriented economy, from a rural to an urban way of life, and until recently, it was moving out of poverty to a middle-income country. Amidst the many trade-offs, India has had to make through this transition has been between preserving the environment and going ahead with projects that have the potential to deliver growth at the cost of air quality, forest cover and water pollution.
The challenge to do this effectively is exacerbated by the scale of the country. India is home to a unique system of government management whereby the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary all have equally important roles in the governance system.
Take the legislature for example: Environment as a subject matter can be divided into various fields -- air, land, water, energy, and biodiversity, and their interactions amongst each other. The legislature, however, has clearly defined rules within a federal structure. While the Union List (List I) under Schedule VII of the Constitution lists the subjects which fall under the domain of the Centre, the State List (List II) includes subjects that states can legislate upon. List III, or the Concurrent List, has residual functions over which both the Centre and states can legislate.
The ‘environment’ comprises various facets of natural resources, such as rivers, and forests. Under India’s federal structure, atomic energy, mineral resources, and rivers fall within the legislative domain of the Centre, while under the State List, the respective state governments can legislate upon matters such as water, land, public health and sanitation. A central policy covering sustainability holistically thus poses an initial challenge.
The Union Budget’s environmental proposals reflect these dichotomies and the trade-offs being made. The Budget proposed a single-window system to streamline environmental clearances and also reduce the time to obtain land approvals for affordable housing.
More importantly, important regulatory agencies such as the Central Pollution Control Board, National Biodiversity Authority, Wildlife Institution of India and the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History either had their budgets cut, or were allocated trivial amounts of money, in contrast to polluting sectors such as coal. The overall message here is that the bureaucracy interferes with business, including environmental assessments, and therefore must be curtailed to help the economy ‘grow’.
The Budget, and the recent draft legislations, including the controversial Environment Impact Assessment Notification Amendment Bill, 2020, indicates that the environment is not a priority, and is disconnected from the country’s economic growth. This approach of the government is in stark contrast to the suggestion of the Supreme Court, referred to above, towards setting up the IES, which would help strengthen practices in environmental regulation, and to the recent commitments of the country towards its net-zero targets at the Conference of Parties at Glasgow.
Sustainability in terms of carbon emissions and a just transition towards a non-fossil fuel-based economy is no longer merely an option but a necessity — a necessity that ties into the economic viability of our businesses and governance. This point has been brought out by the recent sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where it states that direct damage, in the context of India, is estimated at $24 billion a year if emissions are cut as currently promised, and $36 billion, if they are high and ice sheets are unstable. Further down the road, damage from sea-level rise in Mumbai alone could amount to $162 billion a year by 2050.
In this context, it is imperative, and urgent, for all the arms of the government to function with a target-based approach toward sustainability, environmental conservation, and justice.
(Chaturvedi is an
environmental lawyer and
Assistant Dean, Jindal School of Environment and
Sustainability; Mariwala studied History & Anthropology at Stanford University)