The draft EIA notification of 2020: India's ticket to environmental and ecological decimation.

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Picture Courtesy: Rumna Mukherjee


The present pandemic ridden world obliterating countless lives every second serves as a Herculean reality check, reminding us of nature’s backlash to years and years of ruthless ravaging and destruction of ecosystems, biodiversity, and the planet. With modernizations in governance, society, economics, and sciences, measures to mitigate and reverse the ancestral damages; to escape the dystopian reality of a world with no natural resources are now seemingly gaining momentum. With 2020 being a learning curve for the world to proactively adopt sustainable developmental goals and environmental accountability by minimizing or avoiding any detrimental effects to the surrounding natural environment, India seems to be making a more regressive shift in approach with its recent draft EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) notification which if takes shape may result in irrecuperable ramifications to the country’s biodiversity, ecosystems, and lives; a dent severe enough to annihilate the sustenance of the future generations in the very own planet we borrowed from them.

The inception of EIA in India dates back to 1976, during the first tenure of Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, and the 4th five-year plan of the Planning Commission where “harmonious development on the basis of a comprehensive appraisal of environmental issues” was first regarded. Furthermore, Article 48A of India Constitution stating: “The state shall endeavor to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard forests and wildlife of the country” gave the center the power to overrule state decisions in the context of forests and wildlife by transferring them from the state list to the concurrent list. In the 1970s, with India ranking in the top five countries in building dams, the very first environmentally conscious decision in any developmental projects was taken by the Planning Commission and the Department of Science and Technology in the river valley projects such as the Bhakra Nangal, Hirakund, and Damodar valley dams.

The need for assessing the environmental effects of any project requiring infrastructural changes to the environment along with a sense of responsibility towards our indigenous ecology, India’s first move towards an environmentally conscious developmental plan was in the wake of the infamous Bhopal Gas tragedy. With the present-day Central government eager to bring in a checklist of regressive changes to the existing EIA norms which aim to weaken the very core of this policy, the country now faces a looming threat of biodiversity loss, displacement of local communities and fauna, and a probable increase in the number of industrially caused disasters such as the recent Vishakhapatnam gas leak by L.G. polymers’ ill-maintained storage unit of the chemical styrene and the fire at OIL’snatural gas well in the district Tinsukia, Assam.

India being a part of various global environmental treaties and forward-thinking sustainable plans have its own EIA draft notification sticking out like a sore thumb which aims at corroding and dismantling the effectiveness of an already weakening institution. The draft notification released earlier this year allows post-facto clearance of projects which were previously functioning without a government clearance (as seen in the case of the Vishakhapatnam gas leak in early May). The draft also states that any violations according to the new draft should be reported either by a government representative or a project proponent and not a citizen; an idea bizarre to its very core. The new draft also exempts various projects which the government deems to label as “strategic” in addition to their details not being made accessible in the public domain.

A country endowed with immense ecosystem services, dense forest cover and rich biodiversity, India needs to immediately act and develop robust and draconian laws for biodiversity and ecological conservation and future sustenance instead of attempting to use the environment as political pawns for short terms benefits, if at all any.  


- Swagatama Mukherjee



Photo Courtesy: Rumna Mukherjee



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