People's Democracy

  Reformulate National Environment Policy (NEP), 2004: AIPSN

Following is the text of the response of the All India People’s Science Network (AIPSN) to the draft National Environment Policy (NEP), 2004 released by the UPA government. Detailing its critique of the policy, AIPSN  has demanded that this policy be suitably reformulated with the involvement of people’s movements and organisations.

THE All India People’s Science Network (AIPSN), a network of state level peoples’ science movement organisations, after reviewing the current draft NEP is of the considered view that the existing path of development is unsustainable and iniquitous in character and has a detrimental impact on the livelihood security of the rural and urban poor. It is also creating serious environmental and health risks for the nation as a whole. The AIPSN believes that at the current juncture, the aim of the Draft NEP should be to reverse these trends and facilitate transition towards an ecologically and socially just path of development. Needless to say the policy should also protect the interests of the nation and the majority of its population in the context of the emerging regimes of global environmental and economic governance and treaties related to them.

In this context the formulation of a cross-sectoral National Environment Policy, 2004 would have been a welcome step if it had been preceded by some serious dialogue and debate amongst different interest groups and mass organisations over what should have been the nature, scope and jurisdiction of such a policy. As it happens, the policy has been formulated in a way that can easily mislead the general public and the interested and affected parties of its real intentions. Apparently the NEP 2004 derives its legitimacy from the inclusion of objectives such as to provide for intra and inter-generational equity and integration of environmental concerns in socio-economic development process and from the commitment to be guided in the policy and partnership design by the principles such as internalising the environmental costs into planning process, precautionary principle, fixing strict liability (even in the absence of legislation or standards) and preventive action, all of which are well-intentioned. But the way the NEP identifies the causes of environmental degradation it does start to show that it lacks intention to make a clean break with the existing paradigm of development and conservation.

The NEP has been released within a few months of the formation of a new government which, in order to actualise the popular mandate, has drawn up a Common Minimum Programme (CMP) that enunciates priorities and programmes for socio-economic development with special emphasis on the interests and well-being of disadvantaged and poorer sections. It is surprising indeed that the NEP is not informed by these concerns.

NO CHANGE IN THE VISION & STRATEGY OF DEVELOPMENT

•  It is significant that the NEP 2004 does not envisage a change in the path of development to make it anymore ecologically and socially just. Its vision of structural, institutional and policy interventions is aligned with the type of changes envisaged that are consistent with the interests of and lifestyle acceptable to the rich. It fails to acknowledge the special problems facing the dalits, tribals and other marginalised people in respect of access to resources, capabilities and markets.

• The NEP 2004 seeks no change in the strategy of economic growth with the aim to particularly make the patterns of production and consumption ecologically and socially just for the people who have been victimised by the processes of economic development, it fails to put sustainable human development on the national policy agenda in a systematic way. For example the section on strategies and actions does not call for changes in the industrial and product structure that would facilitate the introduction of and transition to sustainable natural resource use. In fact the NEP ignores the issue of elimination of unsustainable practices of production and consumption of non-renewable resources by the corporate sector and affluent classes.

• It also pushes the question on the vision and path of sustainable development under the carpet by placing the entire blame for environmental degradation on either the poor people or on so called “institutional (read governmental/ state) and market failures”. All references to “the right of people and communities” and “inter-generational equity” are only incidental to these aims and seek to soften their impact and path towards an ecologically, economically and socially just order.

• It will be pertinent to state here that although the policy document is claiming that “sustainable development concerns in a sense of human well-being are a recurring theme in India’s development philosophy”, but the current document is short of people friendly ideas on its own vision for sustainable development. This is particularly true of the list of “incomparable entities” that it enumerates and puts under direct state control for the purpose of enhancement and conservation of environmental resources.

• The NEP places undue reliance on economic and fiscal measures to engender environmental conservation, for example as regards irrigation water especially groundwater. No one would disagree that proper pricing of natural resources, taking into account present and future environmental costs, is desirable. Yet there is little evidence to suggest that pricing alone ensures resource conservation: it is well known that raising taxation on petrol/diesel or on automobiles has not brought about any reduction in automobile purchase, usage or petroleum consumption because, when such commodities are viewed in some manner as "necessities", rising costs are merely absorbed or rather passed on elsewhere in the economy. This overarching economic-fiscal orientation is also evident in the highly peculiar recommendation that periodic review of the NEP be undertaken by the Cabinet Committee for Economic Affairs!

NEO-LIBERAL ORIENTATION TO INSTITUTIONAL CHANGES

• Its key propositions regarding strategies and actions straddle between a conventional conservationist agenda (excluding people’s rights over the use of their local resources) and a strategy that seeks to open up the natural resources sector to market forces. Consequently it also chooses to transform the role of the Indian State in the direction of facilitating the market forces to self-regulate their activities for environmental concerns and confining largely to its own direct interventions to the application of price and taxation instruments. By doing this the NEP severely dilutes the development and welfare role and responsibility of the Indian State.

• It consciously chooses to remain silent on what type of institutional forms and access should be created in order that rights of access and ownership should be provided to natural resource dependent people. Needless to say, the role of the state has to be developmental in nature to provide access to resources to the marginalised sections of the Indian people.

• The NEP attempts to bring issues of the settlement of ownership and control under the rubric of “institutional failures” or the failure to settle rights. But it is not successful in doing this because it does not get into the establishment of a policy framework for what would constitute the legitimate framework of “rights of use” on different resources. It states that it will follow the Public Trust Doctrine where the State is “not an absolute owner, but merely a trustee of all natural resources, which are by nature meant for public use and enjoyment, subject to reasonable conditions, necessary to protect the interests of a large number of people”. While this assertion of the state being not an absolute owner may have welcome but for the fact that it does not limit the State power when it comes to the privatisation of natural resources. If the State is not an absolute owner, can it privatise something it does not own? The extension of the Protected Areas Network is mandated by this policy. This effectively means that people will have no rights in this area. But the policy is silent on the fact on how the State’s power to denotify these areas for commercial or large developmental projects will also be delimited through this review of legislation.

• By not specifying how the ownership and right of access shall be established over these resources the policy is in fact stating that deregularisation is just another term for privatisation by encouraging environmental investments which will be made by corporate houses since the resource-dependent poor people are not in a position to make such investments. For example the policy makes claims about the rationalisation of Coastal Regularisation Zone notifications. It specially talks of decentralising “the clearance of specific projects to State Environmental Authorities, exempting activities which do not cause significant environmental impacts....”. This formulation is clearly detrimental to the livelihood of fisherfolk and can easily lead to the destruction of the coastal ecology. Yet again it fails to outline the inalienable rights of the fisherfolk, or a mechanisms by which these rights can be settled. The impression given is that the market forces will necessitate multi-stakeholder partnerships through which rights will be settled once again leaving the people to mercy of corporate shipping and fishing companies.

• For the improvement in access to resources and the grant of right to development for marginalised people the institutional structures are needed to be co-evolved in respect of both promotion and regulation. The co-evolved structures should be in a position to protect the knowledge of local people and develop that knowledge in a way that the local communities can get the maximum benefit out of it. This would be possible only if the policy makes explicit affirmative proposals for the development of ‘marginalised people friendly’ mechanisms of project evaluation, benefit sharing and the decentralisation of natural resource management. Such types of proposals are missing from the document. For example, the document talks of universalisation of joint forest management (JFM). But  it is quite well known that even in those areas where JFM is already in  practice the forest dependent people have been gradually marginalised on account of the lack of co-evolved institutional structures for the promotion and regulation of markets in non-timber forest produce trade. Clearly the draft policy has no plans to rectify this problem. This also reflects the fact that there has been little attempt to learn from past experiences while framing the document.

• At another place the NEP reiterates the age-old principle of “non-regularisation” of encroachments in the post-1980 period. In the same section on forests it also talks of rationalising EIA principles and solving the problems of delays in clearances. Clearly this is just a framework for easing controls once imposed by the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980. But the policy does not remove the central weakness in the framework of this act: it does not provide a redressal system for the complaints of the people who depend on forests and biodiversity for their livelihood.

• The policy document fails to make a clear commitment towards the making EIA statements open and public and subject evaluation and contestation by affected parties. The democratisation of decision making structures and expertise demands that all stakeholders have the equal opportunity to evaluate the impact of the project on their livelihood security and environmental futures. Further all major development and industrial projects should have the prior informed consent of the affected parties and should make public their benefit sharing plans and agreements. At another level it should also be mandatory to provide information to local committees and bodies, and hold public hearings at periodic intervals.

• It is significant that NEP limits itself largely to creation of market friendly regulatory regimes to facilitate the introduction of private players in natural resource management. It does not pay sufficient attention to the creation of knowledge, expertise, technology, and infrastructure for the development and diffusion of environment friendly innovations. For example while outlining the scope of institutional changes needed at the cross-sectoral level in the section on strategies and actions, it fails to acknowledge the need to urgently fill the gaps that have emerged in respect of the development of critical S&T infrastructure required to undertake the generation of scientific expertise required for environmental monitoring, enforcement, development and diffusion of technologies needed for the sustainable development of different socio-economic sectors.

• Various formulations in the NEP Draft appear, intentionally or otherwise, to favour certain special interest groups and the corporate sector in general. Commercial "forestry" and industrial-commercial activities along the long Indian coastline have already been referred to. Mention may also be made of the fact that fossil-fuel based power generation and automobiles have been treated with kid-gloves while re-processing of hazardous wastes, unplanned urban construction etc are simply ignored. More problematically, NEP talks of the "polluter pays" principle but shelters the corporate sector with the caveat "with due regard to public interest and without distorting international trade and investment".  The NEP also argues, without advancing reasons why it is doing so, that international environmental standards need not be adopted as such in India, the convenient argument by which asbestos, a whole range of pesticides including DDT, and many other materials and substances banned in other countries are allowed to be manufactured and marketed in this country. Such provisions in the NEP give rise to perhaps needless suspicion that protection is being offered to certain interest groups who may be adversely affected by such application of international standards in India as with automobile emissions, pesticide residues in aerated beverages etc.

LACK OF SYSTEMIC APPROACH TO POLICY INTERVENTIONS

• The policy interventions outlined in the document are informed by a narrow approach to regulatory reforms. It’s propositions are mostly focused on the problems of transaction costs arising out of the state regulation and its remedies lie essentially in the government shifting to soft civil law, fiscal instruments and use of economic principles in decision making. The policy document is completely oblivious of the obvious fact that environmental transformation is not an activity performed in isolation but one which involves a variety of actions within the system, of which the business groups and communities involved in the process of change forms part. Business groups and communities not only need instruments that focus on individual organisations (e.g. financial instruments), but also instruments that focus on making interventions at the systemic level.

• The NEP totally ignores this systemic aspect of the management of environmental change; it fails to recognise that the processes of environmental change ask for (more attention for) system level policy instruments. These instruments are particularly needed to  support the systemic change management functions relating to the interface management, building and organising of environmental innovation systems, providing a platform for learning and experimenting, providing an infrastructure for strategic intelligence and stimulating demand articulation, strategy and vision development for the specific processes of appropriate technological and institutional change. Even a cursory look at the strategies and actions included in respect of different sectors makes it clear that the policy document does not envisage the use of such system-level instruments.

• In the case of India, the instruments of interface management are particularly important to bring about the convergence and better management of linkages. Interfaces involving diverse institutions and actors with varying interests (which may be often conflicting in nature) would need suitable co-ordination and dispute management to ensure that the disadvantaged sections do not suffer at the hands of powerful resource consuming actors. The NEP has little to say how a mechanism for solving dead-locks, conflicts and holding of broad-based negotiations would be evolved. The market can not fulfil this function and for larger public interest this is an essential role of the State.

• The NEP did not mention about the need to provide an infrastructure for strategic intelligence suited to solving the complex environmental needs and problems of a variety of sectors and different segments of people. This means that the State should be responsible for the creation of mechanisms of technology assessment, foresight, evaluation and benchmarking and stimulating demand articulation, strategy and vision development for the specific processes of appropriate technological and institutional change.

• The NEP fails to emphasise on the need for the building and organising of systems for the development and dissemination of new practices of sustainable resource use for different sectors. The policy should create a flexible framework for providing different types of mechanisms for learning and experimentation by involving interested and affected groups and their associated people’s organisations (e.g. development of incubation and bridging organisations for sustainable resource use practices). At present the NEP assumes that contractual obligations under public private partnerships, and multi-stakeholder agreements will take care of this aspect, and puts very little emphasis on the creation of user and bridging organisations amongst the poor to make use of existing State level R&D and technology delivery infrastructure.

Given these fundamental weaknesses it is appropriate to conclude that the draft NEP needs to be redrafted. Therefore, the AIPSN demands that this policy be suitably reformulated with the involvement of peoples’ movements and organisations.  We would also like the process of public consultation to be given adequate time and publicity.  The process of consultation should adopt people-friendly methods and ensure that those people who do not have easy access to internet and English media also have a say and are able to make an informed choice about the type of environmental policy framework that India needs at this juncture.