By Joydeep Gupta, IANS
New Delhi : All eyes this year are on India’s plans to adapt to the effects of global warming and chart a development path that will avoid the worst of climate change.
The plan, to be finalised by the prime minister’s task force on climate change set up last year, is expected in February or March.
Some last minute inputs may come in from the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS) scheduled here early February. Organised by The Energy and Resources Institute every year, the DSDS theme this year is sustainable development and climate change.
Since climate change is now at the centre of world attention, everyone is awaiting India’s plan, aware that the development path charted by this country will have a major impact on the global environment this century – for better or for worse.
Other critical environmental issues too await India’s policymakers in 2008.
The ministry of environment and forests (MOE&F) has just made a big announcement – air quality in industrial areas must be the same as in residential areas. People living near factories can thus look forward to fewer respiratory ailments, as long as the new rule is implemented in 2008.
Now the ambient air quality standards in India for major pollutants in most areas are an annual average of 60 micrograms per cubic metre of air of sulphur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen and respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) that are small enough to enter the lungs, 140 micrograms of suspended particulate matter and 2 micrograms of carbon monoxide per cubic metre.
The latest report of the Central Pollution Control Board says sulphur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen are within these limits in the 17 largest cities of India, but RSPM levels are not, while carbon monoxide levels remain high in most of these cities.
The board has pointed out that the major sources of RSPM are vehicle exhausts; generator sets; small-scale industries; cooking, especially when fuel wood and dung cakes are used; and the dust generated by traffic movement. The high levels of carbon monoxide are mainly due to vehicle exhausts.
The aim in 2008 will be to enforce the standards in industrial areas. India is second to none when it comes to tough environmental standards to combat pollution, but implementation remains a weak point.
This is perhaps best illustrated by the state of the Yamuna river which, despite a plethora of laws and clean-up schemes, turns into a drain as it flows through the national capital. Thousands of tonnes of residential garbage and industrial effluents are dumped into this river everyday.
This year, the Commonwealth Games Village may come up on the river’s floodplains despite the best efforts of green activists. Its long-term effect on the ecosystem remains to be seen.
Another fractious issue may be taken up – an amendment to the coastal regulation zone. Right now, no one can build within 500 metres of the high water line, a requirement that displeases the hospitality industry because they think it is too restrictive while it displeases the greens because they think it is not restrictive enough.
An amendment is overdue and expected in 2008, though MOE&F officials told IANS they were not sure if it would actually be brought about and which way it would go.
Also, there is no consensus on the equally crucial need to preserve India’s biodiversity, despite lip service. Two divisive debates on this are expected in 2008.
The first will be about the National Biodiversity Action Plan (NBAP) drafted by the MOE&F, which has sought public comments on the draft. Most of the experts who had worked on earlier drafts of the plan are incensed by what the ministry has put out now. They describe it as not an action plan at all but a listing of things done already plus some platitudes.
One of the experts, Ashish Kothari of the NGO Kalpavriksh, said: “The 2007 NBAP is substantially similar to the 1999 national policy and macro-level strategy on biodiversity. About half the ‘actions’ proposed in it are the same as those proposed in 1999. Most strategies picked up from the 1999 document have not been elaborated.
Another expert told IANS: “Crucial sections of the report that have been left out of the draft NBAP are about governance, on land use and eco-regional planning, on equity and participation strategies relating to tribal and other ecosystem peoples and on linking biodiversity and food security programmes”.
The second issue is about the government’s decision to notify the law that gives forest dwellers some rights over forest products, but keeps Project Tiger reserves out of the ambit of the law.
This decision is not going to please people who live in and around forests and who have long been demanding these rights, supported by NGOs who hold that locals are the best custodians of the environment.
This position is, however, opposed by other NGOs who believe the only way to save India’s forests is to have no people inside them at all, with the possible exception of the ecology-conscious tourist.
The fractious debate will continue in 2008, and may become more bitter once the much-awaited tiger census report is out this month. A resolution is essential, as the country’s first-ever National Forest Commission has pointed out that India is losing its forest cover at an alarming rate. When the last reliable estimates were made, forests covered 69.02 million hectares in India, 22.6 percent of the country’s land area that can be utilised.
As for the tiger, most experts expect the new census will show no more than 1,400 of them in the wild in the country, a truly alarming situation for the largest of the world’s big cats.