The Supreme Court’s directive to the Centre to set up a National Environmental Appraisal and Monitoring Authority and related state-level bodies is yet to take shape, but the Karnataka government has already jumped the gun.
The state government has discontinued the State Environment Clearance Committee (SECC). This was by order FEE 19 ENV 2013 dated February 7, 2014. Practically no one outside even knows about the decision that was carried out in a manner that is being described by critics as “stealthy”.
The SECC, that was drafted way back in 1985 by noted ecologist Madhav Gadgil, acted as a filter for industries/projects that did not fall under the ambit of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification of 2006. The Karnataka SECC was also reckoned to be a model environmental clearance procedure for other states.
The preamble to the order said, “The government have examined the role of the State Environment Clearance Committee in light of the EIA Notification, 2006 and found no relevance. It is therefore decided to discontinue the State Environment Clearance Committee (SECC) with immediate effect.”
The principal secretary to the department of forest, ecology and environment (DFEE), Madan Gopal M, admitted that the state government had wrapped up the SECC, but went on to content that this had been done since the SECC itself had no legal standing worth the name.
Gopal also said that the SECC would have become irrelevant now in view of the Supreme Court’s direction to the Centre to set up a National Environmental Appraisal and Monitoring Authority which would grant environmental clearances under the Environment Protection Act (EPA), 1986. The Supreme Court’s order, which came on January 7 this year, had asked the Union government to do the needful by March 31.
What the DFEE principal secretary did not elaborate on was why it took the Karnataka government eight years to realise that there would be no need of the SECC in view of the EIA notification that was issued by the Centre way back in 2006.
Gadgil, who had headed the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), told this writer that he was not surprised at the state government’s decision. Gadgil talked of environmental clearances often being manipulated, and felt that state chief minister Siddaramaiah’s decision was in line with what Union minister for environment and forests, Veerapa Moily, had been doing since he took over this additional charge besides his portfolio of petroleum and natural gas. Gadgil said that both policies and clearances were inclined more towards project proponents than environment itself.
Senior fellow with the Ashoka Trust for Environment and Ecology (ATREE), Sharachchandra Lele, who works with policy issues among other things, expressed surprise at being told about the SECC being folded up. He spoke of commons being gifted away, and cited the recent example of state law and animal husbandry minister TB Jayachandra stating that gomala land would be set aside for industries. Lele also mentioned the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB), and added that the board was severely stretched and stressed to be doing anything constructive.
“It is unfortunate that the Karnataka government has discontinued the SECC. The role of the state government is to protect the interests of people rather than those corporates who pollute the environment without taking any responsibility. The role of the state has been diluted in this case for not being able to protect the environment,” remarked Vinuta Gopal, climate and energy manager with Greenpeace India.
The damning report that did the SECC in
The decision of the Karnataka government came even as a review of the State Environment Clearance Committee (SECC) process was still on. The state government had asked the Environment Management and Policy Research Institute (EMPRI) in March 2013 to look at the SECC process of the last ten years. The report, according to sources, has been submitted, but the government allegedly wants to sit on it.
The report is a virtual indictment of the way SECC clearances have been awarded in the last 10 years in the state. There is not a single project which has got the top two grades in the rankings that were compiled. A copy of the report was leaked to this correspondent. The team was told officially that the report would not be released into the public domain. The EMPRI director-general Ritu Kakkar admitted that the report had been submitted to the state government, but added “we have not heard from them after that.”
The official contention that the SECC has been closed down since it did not have legal sanction is contradicted by the order that was issued to EMPRI.
The order had said in its preamble, “In view of the changed circumstances and the decentralised approach of the Environment Impact Assessment procedure that has been but in place bt the central government, it is felt necessary to find out the activities having considerable impact on the environment and have been left out of the purview of the EIA Notification 2006 and if so can their impact on the environment be assessed through the mechanism such as the State Environment Clearance Committee without going through a formal structured REIA/EIA. It is therefore decided to get a study conducted by the Environment Management and Policy Research (EMPRI), Bangalore.”
Among other things, the EMPRI was supposed to assess whether the SECC could make cumulative impact assessments, and also look at the impact/outcomes of the SECC approvals, especially those given in the past 10 years. The EMPRI report found holes in the process and documented innumerable environmental violations. It was an indictment of the entire SECC process in the state.
