Do Impact Reports Really Impact?

Environment Impact Assessments is now a travesty of original intent, says Sreedhar Ramamurthi

It was first in 1994 that the Environment Impact Assessment notification was put really into orbit by the government. It was meant to ensure that projects in industrial or manufacturing sectors pass the very basic muster of how much negative impacts such projects bring on the environment, or on people living in ‘affected’ areas.

There were procedures that were established with high diligence. Public hearings as a protocol was established with a proper ear given to communities on such EIA’s as they came to be called. The EIA’s also had to be commissioned among professionals who had expertise in the domain and who would offer objective dispassionate analyses and assessments with objectivity, for the appropriate ministry of the government to decide whether the clearance ought to be given or otherwise.

In the 16 years since, the EIA has become a sad parody of what it was meant to be. Applicant companies have decided to get a ‘dummy agency’ most often. The government has made this part of a mechanical process. It is now seen to be one of many hurdles that need to be overcome to get any project cleared by the government. Even the government’s own machinery has begun to see the EIA as another irritant in the process of getting a project cleared. Adjudicators from within the government who form members of ‘approval committees’ that are intended to understand the import of such EIA’s and the hurt it brings to the ecology and people of an affected area, are themselves people who have looked the other way in many cases over the years where there have been fragrant violation of the basic spirit and purpose of such EIAs.

There have been EIAs that are filed with the government and its various departments including the environment ministry which have been cut and paste from other assessment reports of other projects with not even the basic courtesy of reading it to make the EIA relevant for its own project! For instance, an EIA of a project in Russia has been taken by a consultant for a project in Maharashtra! The EIA Report for the Pala-Maneri Dam prepared by RITES contended that the maximum credible earthquake in Uttarkashi was merely 4.2 in the Richter scale!

The Ministry of Environment and Forestry has itself been guilty of releasing environment clearances with the document being a crude cut-and-paste of paragraphs from previous such clearances.

The mindset is clear. Projects have to begin regardless. The EIAs and all that the checks and balances created to ensure that good governance is achieved while industry secures new projects are mere ‘procedural constraints’ that the government and the industry-applicant have to find ways to overcome.

None of them in the entire chain of custodians who are supposed to ensure that responsible diligence is conducted before a project is given clearance is bothered to see whether there is a human face to the damage that would be created in an area. A coal mining project is cleared without any thought to the impact it makes on the people living in that region or the millions of flora and fauna that will necessarily die when such a project is created.

Whether it is a Niyamgiri and Vedanta’s brazen disregard of every people need and of the deeply permanent damage to natural resources, or hundreds of projects where there has already been reported evidence of shocking damage to either people’s health or to forests and soils [and therefore the multitude of rivers and streams], the government and, of course, the culprit company do everything they can to sweep the horrors under the carpet.

From about the time the RTI came in, which was a blessing for all the well-meaning voluntary groups and activists in the non-government sector, there has been even more resistance from the government to offer information of records and evidence gathered by its own departments in the case of such projects where there have been extensive damage to either the environment or the people of the region.

Suppressio Veri Suggestio Falsi

So you have the cruel ironies of a reputed institution of the Government reporting on a project for the exploitation of Coal Bed Methane and on the impact of very deep aquifers of over 20,000 meters of ancient waters from under the complex sub-players of the earth. The report says that the exploitation of water under these deep surfaces does not in any case impact the shallower aquifers between 15 and 300 meters that humans have been using for drawing water! What it does not say is that the earth has taken over a million years to form such ancient waters and we take no more than a few hours to draw them out. What they don’t tell us is that the financial cost of pumping such waters from the far deeper layers of the earth is nothing, but the ecological cost of such upsetting of sensitive ecobalances of the earth will have a deep and profound impact in us in just the next 80 years—let alone the far term future of our civilisation. It seems to be beyond their comprehension, either deliberate or out of ignorance, that those longer term consequences into the next 20 years or 1000 years, are so far-reaching.

For most of these officers in industry or government who are on the ‘other side of the table’ and not of the people or for the people, the scenario is getting to be ‘difficult’. There is a strong icy unwillingness to see beyond the really short term, and the money that they will grab, or a project they will clear.

Many officers and even ministers have gone on record asking for scientific evidence and direct correlation between an action that is taken now to damage an ecosphere while it is so obvious to even a schoolchild that the impact can be horrendous over such long terms of time, of the destruction of a forest or of any ecosystem.

The National Institute of Occupational Hazard is another case in point. It is supposed to be another sentinel offering research evidence that will enhance people welfare and ecological welfare. Recent reports and facts show it to be, sadly, otherwise. In a recent instance, the NIOH is reported to have stalled and blockaded the offering of evidence on the extensive incidence of asbestosis that has occurred in many projects.

They are aware of the damage but do not want to be seen to have been culpable in the clearance of such projects in the past. There are unwritten commands and instructions that come from senior officers, from within the institute or from outside which hamstring the institute from speaking the truth on asbestosis. No amount of RTIs have helped in getting them to behave. They have come up with reasons as flimsy as ‘These are personal health records of individuals, and we cannot give it to activist organisations’. When a voluntary group got afflicted individuals of one area—some 150 such patients who had suffered for some years from the aftermath of the project, with the worsening disease —to put in their application asking for records, the NIOH found another excuse to not offer information.

The RTI has often been called by people to secure startling revelations. The question is, why should there be startling revelations if the government has done its job responsibly and for the people. Why is the government not of the people and by the people?

Sample this: in the 24 years since 1986, the environment ministry cleared over 6,500 projects. After the Environment Impact Assessment notification of 1994, some 3000 projects were cleared.

The story also has been one of complete lack of coordination between the multiple monitoring agencies. There is also an absurd drama of terms of reference themselves being modified much after a project has started, simply to ensure compliance on paper!

The environment ministry officials themselves have admitted in some RTI responses that there is no database on the extent of compliance achieved with the thousands of projects the ministry has cleared over all these years! So what purpose has the MoEF served?

Brownfield Expansion, Greenfield Conservation: A Critical Need

"Sustainable development" implies that economic activity should be designed to create wealth for the use of present and future generations. If natural resources cannot be developed and exploited to create wealth for the nation, the result may be poverty and deprivation[1]. Crisis management soon takes over from sustainable economic development. The conservation of non-renewable resources is an important in the context of long-term future of any country and more so of emerging economies like India. Prof Stiglitz[2] points out how several countries in the wake of liberalization, privatization and globalisation may actually be increasing their GDP while becoming poor on the long-term if the issues of long-term conservation and investments in the improvements of social attributes do not take place concurrently.

In the context of mining, mineral deposits are available to a limited extent no matter how huge is the resource and ideally need to be endowed for posterity. In the past a run-away expansion of `strategic minerals’ did not take place as countries sought to have them for their domestic military needs. Even in our country, Aluminium was considered once such metal. However given the need for improving the living standards and utilising the existing technologies for the benefit of all, resources need to be extracted. There are several ways of ensuring this but the emerging concept of expanding existing areas of extraction and conserving identified deposits is very critical in the context of bauxite in India.

The current reserves of bauxite are distributed between deposits, which are as large nearly 400 million tones such as in Panchpatmali to pocket size deposits of few thousand tones in Ratnagiri Coast. Some of these large deposits are already being extracted. The proposition is that opening up of several new areas involves severe and widespread environmental consequences and social discontent. In the context of the Eastern Ghat Bauxites in Orissa, it makes immense sense in opening up only few areas with large deposits and not `pock-mark’ the entire region with several deposits being opened up. The current market situation of bauxite, with several global players being viable with imports from large distances means that deposits which are within couple of hundred kilometers does not impact the viability of the project.

The case for conservation of mid-sized deposits (~ 50-100 mt) is also important from a medium term economic and technical perspective. The rapid improvement in our technological capability in aero-space will mean that in the next two decades we will have the indigenous capacity to utilize this important element in our industries which if opened up today will be depleted by the time the country needs them and perhaps will not have the choice of the resources.

If we take the case of existing and proposed bauxite-alumina complexes in the Eastern Ghats, the requirement of each company is of the order of 3 million tones per annum. While these could be achieved by opening up several places of smaller deposits it makes ecological and economic sense to restrict to couple of large deposits, some of which have already been opened up.

Such an initiative, where policies enable brownfield expansion and Greenfield conservation will not only enable unhindered development of the industry currently but will also provide the State with options for the future without having to commit all the known deposits to investors.

Mining of bauxite has several adverse environmental impacts, which globally even the Industry concedes[3]. Widespread depletion of resources that are also critical to local livelihoods will only widen the area of community discontent. This will also enable focused attempts at environmental remediation with adequate investments rather than spreading the impact and remediation across the entire region.

The current windfall profits that mining companies and metal industries are having are leading to several players joining the bandwagon. Even in the US when the Oil Companies obtained windfall profits with sudden surge in oil prices, the State intervened to raise additional resources from the companies so that these could be invested in long-term conservation.[4]

---

[1] Quashie LAK, The case for mineral resource management and development, UNU

[2] Stiglitz, Joseph, Making Globalisation Work,

[3] International Aluminum Association’s Life cycle analysis clearly indicates how huge quantum of other critical resources, particularly water is need (1ton of Al requires atleast 13 KL of Water and 15000 KWH of Power)

[4] Stiglitz,ibid

Mining and the 12th Five Year Plan

Mining is one of the most environmentally and socially destructive economic activity. It has a low contribution to the GDP but the conflict it engenders is enormous and widespread. Our country today has the dubious distinction of having illegal mines significantly outnumbering the legal mines. A new Mines Mineral Development and

Regulation Act is on the anvil and it calls for far reaching reforms in the mining sector.

The 12th Five year plan should usher in an era of Mineral Development with development as the focus rather than the current attitude of exploiting minerals.

The key emphasis for the plan has to be on

1) Rationalising and regularization of the on-going mining activities on a war

footing;

The unacceptable situation of illegal mining must be put to an end. Irrational exploitation of differing grades of ores for short term gains has to be restrained.

Illegal mining of minor-minerals particularly of river-bed across the country have

been destroying the river systems and needs urgent attention.

2) Increasing investments on exploration especially through non-invasive technologies and augmenting the reserves both on-land and within our exclusive economic zone in the oceans;

Exploration investment in the country is abysmally low and does not even constitute 2% of the global exploration investments and needs to be raised significantly. There are very little resources going into developing new exploration methods. While our

EEZ extends to 200 km from the coast, current investments are restricted only to search for oil and gas.

3) Enhancing the efficiency of the mining activities and generating more resources from “brown-field” expansion rather than opening up new “green-field” areas;

Small pocket deposits in forested regions are being opened up creating patchiness and larger impact on the forest corridors while efficiency improvements and expansion of existing deposits are being neglected. This has to be a high priority.

4) Enabling and emphasizing on local value addition and restricting export of minerals;

Though every state government talks about value addition, in the name of lack of technology or that mining is a stand-alone industry important minerals are being exported with very little benefit to the state or the communities. Value addition must be the norm rather than as an exception.

5) Developing a widespread understanding of the strategic value of different minerals and ensuring conservation of requisite quantities of such minerals;

The strategic value of various minerals must be recognized and specific efforts must be made to conserve minerals essential for the country’s future. Minerals such as bauxite, titanium, and several heavy metals crucial for future development of materials need to be assessed for our long term needs rather than for profits to corporates in the current period.

6) Ensuring strict compliance of all the environmental, social and labour laws governing mining activities and

Several environmental, social and labour laws are constantly violated in several mining contexts. The laws should be made convergent with proper oversight authorities. The blight of occupational diseases such as asbestosis and silicosis must be eliminated.

7) Enabling evolution of economic opportunities not dependent on mining.

The long term consequences of climate change and strategic future mineral availability should form the key consideration in the development of minerals. It is important to recognize that mineral bearing areas do not suffer from the classic situation of “resource curse” which is seen across the globe. In order to do this effort must be made to identify economic opportunities which are not dependent on mining.

We must recognize that the minerals will be ours for ever if we restrain mining but the wealth of the soil and other biota will be lost for ever if we mine the minerals below them. Mechanisms like the NPV do not reflect the true long term value of the ecosystem services the terrain and the plant and animal resources provide.

A colonial relic past its time…

A colonial relic past its time…

The tyrannical face of land acquisition needs to undergo a makeover, soon.

He looks vulnerable with his boyish, innocent smile. He has turned out to be a David to the Goliath that the Government represents. This diminutive, wealthless man, Anna Hazare has made the impossible possible with his dogged stance, that people across the country have backed. And in the new tide of confidence that we saw from him, he has raised the bar with his demand [among other things] for reforms in regulations for land acquisition and reparation. What did he really mean by this? What has been the scenario on ‘taking away’ of people’s lands from the mute, helpless lot of farmers in the country?

If you go back in history to 1894, you will see the British brought this law, the Land Acquisition Act, to enable the colonial administration to quickly ‘take’ lands when the State needed them for public purposes like creating the network of railways, or for logging for timber in the sub Himalayan region, for irrigation projects and such. Therefore they made it a strong procedural law claiming that there was an eminent domain of the state in the business of ‘takeover’ of such properties of people.

The act continued because it was convenient for the government. Further, it was a procedural Act that the state governments had no work to do with it. To this day, 60+ years after Independence, you won’t find many state-level rules for land acquisition. When it was a colonial power it was alright to call it ‘land acquisition’. The very idea of acquisition is unconstitutional in the context of the tyranny of such land grabbing that has been the norm in the last decade.

So what would you do? In place of acquisition you actually need that land from that person who is the right holder as of now. And you need to recognize the rights these people hold. If an organization—be it a mining company or a large power project—wants a landowner to relinquish his rights for its business activity, the holder has to be requested to relinquish his property or resources. And for the hardship, loss of livelihood, displacement from the land and the community that he belonged to, there has to be a price that the organization or the Government agrees to pay as ‘reparation’.

Well, this is a function that will be better served if the tyranny of a hundred-year-old Act is restructured to allow for various state government to make rules and regulations that will reflect such equity in the making. What applies in Rajasthan does not apply in Himachal Pradesh. Even by the current Bill, the resettlement and rehabilitation provisions can be only invoked if 100 acres are acquired together. But then 100 acres in any mountainous terrain of the hill states, of Western or Eastern Ghats, or the sub-Himalayas, is very huge.

Depending upon where the land is, settlements of communities that are sometimes centuries-old disappear forever. The State administration is better positioned to understand the sensitivities of such land acquisition—at least the local administration will recognize local conditions better than it can be done in the corridors of New Delhi.

The Central Act is far too procedural to serve the purpose any more in an economy that is growing as rapidly as now. Coal extraction alone is rising from the current level of 300 million to 2 billion tonnes by 2030! Then there is iron ore, bauxite, gas exploration and other such projects that are necessary, that need to be handled with a human face put to the process of acquiring such lands.

So what are the lessons that the rest of the world offers us today? The UN has sought ‘free, prior and informed consent’ from such landowners. This means a transparent process of partnering such requisition of land [not acquisition]. The Government or an organization cannot go into acquisition for a project saying, “I want so much land.” They need to say, “I want this land for a project.” And then explain the consequences. “It will destroy so much of the forest, draw so much water from some other area, displace people, throw up dust and such.” People need to understand what the Government or such organizations are going into. What are the risks before the community and their traditional lands and the forests around?

How do you size the need of land for a project? When the Hajira-Bijaipur-Jagdishpur pipeline project was taken up two decades ago, there were 7 fertilizer plants. They were all 1,350-tonne per day plants, with more or less the same Italian technology. In the chain of HBJ plants, IFFCO operates the same-scale plant at 376 acres. Indo Gulf Fertilisers has 672 acres. NFL has got about 700 acres. The Tatas have as much as 2100 acres.

Look at the new Mining Bill. It says any single lease has to have a cap of 100 square kilometers, or 10,000 ha. Companies end up having one pocket of deposit here, another tract of land in another region, leading to destruction of larger ecosystems around two different micro-regions. While the law was intended to avoid abuse of sensitive ecosystems, and to bring restraint in the Government’s own and of an organisation’s need for acquiring lands, that intent is not served well thanks to the lack of latitude and autonomy in decision-making at the local administration level.

These are complex issues, of course. And for every suggestion that is made for such structural changes in a system as old as acquisition, there will be a dozen potential risks that experts will identify. The question, as Anna Hazare is asking, is: What is fair to the farmer? How do we strip the government and administration of that hideous face of tyranny and corruption that is hurting the vulnerable, silent thousands across India?

Sreedhar Ramamurthi