The Union environment ministry will exempt highway projects within the country’s borders from the requirement of prior environmental clearance. This is a move environmentalists fear could lead environmental degradation in ecologically fragile or biodiversity-rich areas.
The MoEFCC, the ministry of environment and forest and climate change (MoEFCC), released a draft notice on April 11. It stated some highway projects located near borders are sensitive and should be exempted the requirement of seeking an environmental clearance (EC). Instead, the draft provided environmental safeguards that project developers can use to ensure their compliance.
Highway projects that have strategic and defense significance in border states are sensitive. They must be completed on priority basis to protect security, defense and security. The ministry considers it necessary to exempt such projects in border areas from the requirement for EC. This is according to the draft notification amending regulations for the Environment Impact Assessment regulations. HT has received a copy.
The notification seeks to exempt thermal energy plants with a 25 MW capacity based upon biomass or non-hazardous municipal waste using supplementary fuel like coal, lignite / petroleum from the requirement for prior EC. The ministry believes that the use of the aforementioned fuel mixture is eco-friendly. To encourage such activities, it has increased the threshold capacity for thermal power plants.
The notification will increase the exemption threshold for ports/harbours that only handle fish, exempt width at highway toll plazas, junction improvement at intersections, and eliminate the need for EC to expand airport terminal buildings.
Environmental activists are concerned that exempting defense projects from green clearances could lead environmental degradation in ecologically fragile, biodiversity-rich border regions, mainly in the eastern and west Himalayas. They claim it means that defense projects in Arunachal Pradesh, Kashmir and along dense forests will not be examined.
India’s environment clearance was always open to periodic amendments. Many of these were to lower the legal standards in particular sectors or projects. Kanchi Kohli, legal researcher at Centre for Policy Research, stated that the ministry’s defense for new draft amendments is to say that their impacts are small and can be addressed by management measures.
The environment clearance process is failing to strengthen on the basis site specificity, project histories, and our understanding of climate changes. Exemptions for airport expansions and defense projects put lives, livelihoods, and investments at risk. She said that the proposed amendments operate on a reverse logic.
Activists refer to the Chardham all-weather highway that runs 880km for pilgrimage to four sacred sites in Uttarakhand. The Supreme Court granted permission to the Union government to build all-weather roads of 10m width as part its Char Dham project in Uttarakhand. This was to highlight that recent history has presented serious security challenges and that large strategic feeder roads to Indo China border areas were necessary to meet the infrastructural requirements of the armed forces.
A high-powered committee that was involved in the matter presented a split opinion to the top court. A majority supported wider roads on Char Dham routes, taking into consideration the strategic requirement and snow removal requirements — while a minority highlighted the environmental dangers.
Many ecologists and geologists have raised concerns about the impacts of hill cutting and muck disposal, as well as instability, that will be caused if a double lane paved shoulder road (DLPS) is built.
It is absurd to say that the char dham projects doesn’t need EC. To avoid environmental clearance, the project was divided up into small parts. They may now bypass the EIA for Bhagirathi Ecosensitive Zone, stated Mallika Bhanot, member from Uttarakhand-based Ganga Ahvaan.
Within 60 days, objections or suggestions regarding the proposal contained within the draft notification can be made.
Officials from the government insist that all exemptions have been considered security requirements and that their systems are still subject to checks.
These exemptions were made in consideration of security and peoples. The process is subject to checks. According to a senior official from the environment ministry, we are careful to ensure that environment management plans (EMPs) are strictly followed and well monitored.
