Draft EIA Notification

Why in news?

The Union Ministry of Environment has introduced a new Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification.

What is the background?

India is a signatory to the Stockholm Declaration (1972) on Environment.
We enacted laws to control water (1974) and air (1981) pollution soon after.
But it was only after the Bhopal gas leak disaster in 1984 we legislated an umbrella Act for environmental protection in 1986.
Under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, India notified its first EIA norms in 1994.
It set in place a legal framework for regulating activities that access, utilise, and affect (pollute) natural resources.
Every development project has been required to go through the EIA process for obtaining prior environmental clearance ever since.
The 1994 EIA notification was replaced with a modified draft in 2006.

What are the problems in existing mechanism?

Though established to safeguard the environment, the EIA process, often achieved the opposite.
It had a facade of legal paperwork for a range of de facto concessions enjoyed by industries.
Lack of administrative capacity to ensure compliance often renders long lists of clearance conditions meaningless.
Then there are periodic amendments exempting one category of industries or the other from scrutiny.

What are the key changes in 2020 notification?

It seeks to replace the existing EIA notification of 2006.
It proposed to reduce or even remove public participation, and by extension independent expert opinion, from the process of granting environmental clearances.
Section 26 - It provides a list of projects that would not attract environmental clearance or permission, including coal mining and seismic surveys for oil, methane and shale gas on some lands.
Strategic projects - Projects concerning national defence and security are naturally considered strategic.
But the government also gets to decide on the “strategic” tag for other projects.
The 2020 draft says no information on “such projects shall be placed in the public domain”.
Section 14 - All inland waterways projects and expansion/widening of national highways will be exempt from prior clearance.
It also limits the scope of public involvement to the districts concerned, in the case of national parks and sanctuaries where pipeline infrastructure will pass.
These include roads that cut through forests and dredging of major rivers.
Further, it retains the clause that if a public agency or authority considers the local situation not conducive to participation by citizens, the public consultation need not include a public hearing.

Source: The Hindu, The Indian Express