"Amendments in the new draft are arbitrary and devoid of any scientific rationale":AAP
Prakash Kamat,
Panaji, June30- The Aam Aadmi Party(AAP)Goa, places on record its serious objections to the Draft EIA Not. 2020, in a letter written to Union Minister for Environment and Forest and Climate Change Prakash Jawadekar on Tuesday.
The letter says,"The earth is all we have in common". The Pandemic the world over has shown that there is a greater need now to protect our environment.
We have serious reservations about your intent in bringing this draft that is beyond the very scope of your ministry which is supposed to exist to safeguard the environment.
We raise our objections to the EIA Draft Notification, 2020 which is inherently opposed to the mandate of your Ministry. In fact to remind your Ministry again, on the 12th of May, 2020, 291 conservation scientists from across India, including members of statutory bodies urged you in larger public interest to “carry out the intended mandate of the Ministry, which is the protection of India’s forests, wildlife and natural heritage and not fast-track clearance of projects.”
Instead, the EIA Draft seeks to not only deviate from your Ministry’s mandate but subvert citizenship, and partnerships that strengthen our public health and environment. You will recall the principles of swaraj to know that public consultation is required for participatory decision making, but the EIA Draft Notification expands the list of projects (such as inland waterways, national highway widening, modernization of irrigation infrastructure etc) that do not require consultation. The Draft even allows for exceptions to be made where public consultations are required and cannot be held because of extraneous circumstances that may deem to arise owing to ‘local situations’. The undefined ‘local situation’ can only be misused and stifle the voices of concerned locals and citizens to avoid any public scrutiny. Public Hearings, by their very nature expose inconsistencies and to completely eliminate the possibility of such meetings is to not only dilute one of the strongest pillars of the EIA Process but of democracy. The Project Proponents are made less accountable to the public, as the Draft Notification restricts the nature of information that may be put out in public domain by excluding non-disclosable or legally privileged information from being part of the EIA summary.
In fact the EIA Draft seeks to validate prior wrongs of the Project Proponents. The very idea of this goes against the ethos of sound legal understanding, not to mention the numerous orders and observations of the National Green Tribunal and the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India. The only way in which the Draft Notification intends to tackle the issue of violators is by imposing meagre fines in exchange for environmental clearances.
While the Draft repeatedly emphasises the need of prior-environmental clearance, it then inexplicably regularises such violations ex-post facto. The past EIA Notifications do not normalise violations that have been committed prior to receiving environmental clearances. This draft not only goes against the Precautionary Principle and environmental jurisprudence but post facto clearances with meagre fines goes against several court judgments and federalism.
We request you to refer to the matter of S.P Muthuraman v. UOI and Anr [Original Application No. 37 of 2015] which states, “This is an entirely unworkable system and is even contrary to the federal structure of the Constitution. If this approach and procedure is allowed to be followed then any builder/ Project Proponent would complete his project causing irreversible damage to the environment and will then seek post-facto Environmental Clearance from the authorities making it a fait accompli situation.”
The amendments in the new draft are at best arbitrary and devoid of any scientific rationale. The exemption of constructions in 20,000 sq. m to 50,000 sq. m category had no clarity as to why they don’t require an EIA study. The EIA Draft has also increased the number of projects that do not require an EIA study. Further the ceiling for a Category B1 project has been increased from 2,000 ha to 10,000 ha of culturable command area. The Draft has also decreased the time frame for mandatory public consultations from 45 days to 40 days. Similarly, the time period allocated to the public in order to make a representation at the public hearing has also been cut short from 30 days to 20 days, with no rationale provided. Each of these exemptions add up to have a cumulative impact that is detrimental to the interests of the environment.
The EIA draft notification seeks to tailor the process for Project Proponent, disregarding all safeguards to the environment and for resident communities. It is pertinent to look at the observations made in the Vellore Citizens Case by the Hon’ble Supreme Court, where the court affirmed the need for a model of sustainable development that takes cognizance of the EIA process, “..sustainable development must be adopted by them as a balancing concept. If final clearance is granted after taking into account the environmental, social, health concerns, then it can be said that the government is using this process as a tool to ensure sustainability.”
The draft not only goes against federalism, sustainability principles and tries to stifle the voices of citizens, and in light of these serious concerns, our demand can only be that the draft EIA Draft 2020 should be fully scrapped.
Remember "The Earth does not belong to us. We belong to the Earth."
We hope you will heed to these objections and scrape the notification at the draft stage itself, says letter jointly signed by Elvis Gomes,AAP,Goa Convenor and Sidharth Karapurkar, AAP Goa Environment Cell
Convenor.(eom)
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