Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA Draft 2020)

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a process of evaluating the likely environmental impacts of a proposed project or development, taking into account inter-related socio-economic, cultural, and human-health impacts, both beneficial and adverse. 

It comes under the Environmental Protection Act, 1986. It covers projects such as mining or coal or other minerals, thermal, nuclear & hydro-power projects, real estate projects, infrastructure development, and other industrial projects. It prevents the proposed activity or projects from being established without proper oversight or taking inopportune consequences into account. It analyzes various choices for a project and identifies the one which represents the best combination of economic and environmental expenses and benefits. Environmental Impact Assessment is a formal process in many countries and is currently practicing in more than 100 countries all over the globe.

India declared the first EIA norms in the year of 1994. A new draft was introduced in 2020 but has been criticized for its problematic changes in rules. The recent outline of the Environmental Impact Assessment permits post-facto clearance. That is, any project that comes up without environment safeguards or clearances could carry out their operation. In the new EIA draft, there is a list of projects exempted from the assessment. These include any of the projects that the government categorizes as vital. Once a project considered imperative, then no information related to such a project shall be placed in the public domain. Each inland waterways and national highway projects have excluded from the public consultation. There is procurement that excuses the construction projects of up to 150,000 sq.m from Environmental Impact Assessment and public deliberation.

According to the new draft, violations can be reported only by a government representative or the project advocate and not the citizens. Each EIA draft will present for the public hearing. It gives the public a prospect to understand the project and its features. In the existing law, the EIA report is made available to the public 30 days in advance for the public hearing. But as per the recent draft, the period has been reduced to 20 days. Consider projects like mines, power plants, etc. That remains operational for 20 to 30 years, and the construction of those will take at least 5 to 6 years. And the Environmental Impact Assessment report of such a project will be a document of thousands of pages in usual cases. If so, reducing its public hearing period of 30 days by 20 or 10 days, how come this possible? This issue can solve by put forward the idea of digital India. But we have to consider the tribals too. How many of them can be part of this? If we are excepting the case of tribals, how many of the general will participate? That will be a great failure anyways. 

Recent incidents such as the gas leak at the LG Polymer plant in Vishakhapatnam, gas leak in the pesticide plant of the union carbide in Bhopal and blowout and fire at the Oil India Limited in Assam are some of the examples that point out the importance of EIA in India.

So the thing is, we cannot let this new EIA draft be approved. The more we are not taking care of our nature, the more chances are there for such pandemics like floods, viral infections, etc. occurring. We really can't afford any of this, even if it doesn't affect many of us personally right now.


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