Reimagining environmental governance; time to rethink ‘pollution control’ boards

It was the summer of 2003, we returned after sampling for water quality in some of the tanks of east Bengaluru, notably Bellandur and Varthur amongst others. Some parameters like pH and temperature were measured in the field, while the rest were analysed in the wet lab. Repeating this exercise month after month, as a monitoring activity although eventually leading to an academic publication, there was no ray of hope that the situation would improve.

Primarily because the State Pollution Control Board, which was supposed to monitor the situation was not at it. Nor were there any efforts by other actors in the system to reduce and mitigate the pollution to our water bodies. Sadly, the situation remains even after about two decades. Unfortunately, it may continue to remain so, if we don’t address it from a systems thinking.

Read: KSPCB risks losing way with its tightrope act

The Central and State Pollution Control Boards (PCB) were established after the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act in 1974. Subsequently, with the passage of the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act in 1981 and Environmental Protection Act in 1986, the ambit of the Board expanded. However, there exists some stark contrasts even between the state PCBs and the CPCB. The CPCB, with its head office in New Delhi, has regional offices and is reasonably well-equipped with laboratories. In addition, they have technically trained human resources specialised in dealing with matters across the spectrum (air, water, biomedical, municipal, among others).

However, at the state PCBs, the human resources are minimal and instead of allowing one to specialise in a particular area, they often end up multitasking. More than dealing with technical matters, the officers of the State PCBs are spending considerable time in dealing with legal matters, often requiring them to attend court proceedings.

The lack of techno-legal expertise within state PCBs is forcing the existing technically trained human resources to don this role. This, in many ways, is not allowing the officers to function effectively. Clearly, the role and functioning of PCBs are no match for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or European Environment Agency. They are fairly autonomous with large budgets. With the emergence of the liberalised ‘Ease of Doing Business’ window for industries and commercial establishments, the role of PCB has been reduced to a paper tiger.

Perhaps, it is time we rethink the stated goals of ‘pollution control’ to larger aspects of environmental governance in the realm of technology-driven society.

The nature of governance will require one to come out of the shackles of techno-managerial hierarchical administration to a more participatory, decentralised and bottom-up approach. Instead of the ‘Board’ style of governance, it is essential to embed the ethos of environmental governance within respective local bodies (rural and urban). In such a scenario, the local actors can guide decision-making and take part in monitoring with a more participatory approach. Instead of monitoring for environmental pollution, the monitoring can be for ecological indicators and enable their appreciation at all levels.

One of the promising approaches would be to consider the socio-ecological system framework for ecosystem management at multiple scales that was proposed by Elinor Ostrom. Harini Nagendra, a Professor of Sustainability at the Azim Premji University has indeed applied this framework to diagnose the urban lake commons in Bengaluru. It did reveal how in some of the lakes, the collective action and ecological performance was better than state management, suggesting that for negotiating changes in governance, community-based systems were successful.

Rethinking environmental governance will also require changing or modifying the existing statutory framework and providing them the right impetus for effective realisation of the aims. This will require the current political and bureaucratic leadership to think and decide through appropriate statutory framework and budgetary provisions. As Gerald Frug says, the question remains though, of who decides who decides.

(The writer is an urban ecologist)