New Delhi: As his government strives to make difficult choices in the “growth vs environment” debate, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today laid down norms for effective environmental governance: put in place a regulatory structure, evolve standards and enforce them strictly, but do not allow return of the “licence permit raj”.
"We must put in place a structure of regulatory policies which will prevent potentially damaging behaviour. This is what we do by setting regulatory standards and enforcing them. I must emphasise that standards are not enough. They must also be enforced, which is often difficult. It is also necessary to ensure that these regulatory standards do not bring back the licence permit raj which we sought to get rid of in the wake of economic reforms of the early Nineties," Singh said while inaugurating the three-day summit, which has become an annual feature.
His remarks come three days after his government gave the environmental nod to South Korean company POSCO to go ahead with its plans to construct an iron and steel plant in Orissa, and amidst a raging debate within the Cabinet on how environmental laws should be implemented against crucial development and infrastructure projects.
"We must deal with residual pollution that may be caused despite regulatory efforts. The principle that should be followed in such cases is that the polluters must pay. This will discourage the polluters and also provide a means of financing the corrective steps necessary to counter the pollution caused," he said.
"This will discourage the polluters and also provide a means of financing the corrective steps necessary to counter the pollution caused. We in India are trying to do this by setting appropriate standards in several areas, especially in the most energy-using industries. As a general rule we are trying to establish the principle that the polluter must pay, though that is much more difficult to achieve in all cases," he said.
The Prime Minister also talked about the Forest Rights Act -- the alleged non-implementation of which was used as one of the reasons to hold back environmental clearance to POSCO, amongst others -- and hoped that this "landmark legislation" would "spur local initiative on sustainable use of resources, conservation of biodiversity and maintenance of ecological balance".
"Our view has been that those who have been primarily responsible for the build up of greenhouse gases and who also have the greatest capacity to act to bear the brunt of the responsibility. Developing nations are obviously much less culpable, and have much greater need for continued growth. These countries should be helped to achieve sustainable development paths," he said.
The climate change talks in Mexico last year, he said, did not resolve the problem but did produce some modest result.
"India particularly welcomes the agreement on the setting up of a framework of technology innovation centres under the UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) to foster local adaptation and mitigation measures," he said.
"I would also like to emphasise that even as we wait for meaningful agreements on global mitigation action, we in India have committed ourselves to keeping our per capita consumption below the average for the industrial countries," he said.
Source: The Indian Express, IANS
Images: Reuters