A high powered committee created by the Prime Minister of India reviewed the social and environmental aspects of two planned dams on the Bhagirathi river, a Himalayan tributary of the Ganga and recommended that the projects be shelved.
Respect for social and religious sentiments of the people along with environmental concerns was the reason given.
Mr. Jairam Ramesh the Minister for Forest and Environment was one member of the committee along with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Power Minister Sushil Shinde.
This good news though hides a more ubiquitous failure and that is that the system put in place to review large infrastructure projects did not object to these projects. The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) which should have raised a red flag instead waved a green one. Its only a higher level intervention by the Prime Minister that has saved a stretch of this river from being reined in.
In fact this high powered committee reassessed the EIA and found violations in the environmental clearance process.
The EIA needs to be fixed from the bottom up and that means fixing some of its the structural problems. As I have written before the EIA is becoming a rubber stamp for getting clearances for projects. The Terms of Reference are deliberately kept restricted. Not enough time is given for comprehensive studies. And it does not have the authority to make the project conditional to the findings of the study.
This is what Mr. Jairam Ramesh needs to fix.
If he has to run to the Prime Minister, let it not be for creating another high level committee to specially look into one project ...but to plead to the PM that the ground level process set in place to review all big projects have real teeth and muscle to delay, redesign or need be cancel projects. He should ensure that fly by night consultants who do incredible shoddy science are fired and permanently blacklisted and projects not started until a serious scientific assessment of the project is complete.
There seems to some movement on that front. Mr Ramesh has ordered that the cumulative impact of a cascading series of hydroelectric dam projects on the river Alaknanda in Uttarakhand and the river Teesta in Sikkim be studied. Previously the EIA were restricted to studing each dam in isolation as if nothing was happening upstream and downstream of that one project.
The river Bhagirathi falls in the Ganga basin. The Ganga is a pretty special river and so complaints about damage to religious sentiments and the ecosystem have plenty of sympathetic ears. There is a special Ganga River Basin Authority set up to restore and clean up the river.
Other rivers and projects are not that lucky and overall the system put in place to evaluate projects is failing.
That's what needs to be corrected pronto if India want to develop while still protecting critical, sensitive and bio-diverse ecosystems.
Showing posts with label government inaction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label government inaction. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Chile, Haiti, India....And Earthquake Preparedness
On NPR's Talk of the Nation (March 1) guests discuss earthquake preparedness and why the Haitian earthquake caused much more damage than the Chilean one despite the Chilean earthquake being more powerful.
Geology is part of the answer. The Haitian earthquake occurred closer to population centers and was shallower. So a very large population was exposed to violent ground shaking. In Chile the earthquake was farther away from large population centers with the most violent ground motion taking place at sea.
Apart from geology, one of the guests Eliana Loveluck who is a survivor of the 1960 Chilean earthquake offers this explanation:
Neil Conan: But Eliana Loveluck is still with us here in the studio. I wanted to ask you a question about these building codes. Is this a part of Chilean culture?
Ms. Loveluck: It is. In Chile, we grow up knowing about earthquakes, being told what to do in different situations. I always grew up knowing that if I was at the beach, and I saw water receding, I needed to run the other way because the water was coming back.
But I think what is very important to acknowledge is that Chile has always had a very strong infrastructure, and it has a very well-functioning government, and that infrastructure is prepared and constantly being reassessed in terms of preparedness for dealing with earthquakes.
The other thing that I think is very important to also acknowledge is that Chile is a country with very little corruption. It actually scores very close to the United States, and so it is not a country where you can go and bribe a builder to overlook the codes or anything like that....
Recent earthquake memories, education, better government institutions and low levels of corruption enabling preparedness plans to be effectively implemented.
Haiti suffered from both a geological misfortune of having the epicenter too close to population centers, but also from a total lack of preparedness, a virtual lack of institutional support and extreme poverty leading to poor quality constructions.
India falls somewhere in between Chile and Haiti. It has good institutions and a strong science and engineering backbone. The National Bureau of Standards have long ago formulated earthquake resistance building codes which have undergone periodic revisions. The National Information Center Of Earthquake Engineering at IIT Kanpur has a list of all the earthquake building codes.
So there is no lack of safety codes and regulations. Its the last point Ms. Loveluck points to that India fails miserably namely ....government apathy and corruption. Enforcement of rules is very poor. Its easy to bribe officials into overlooking construction plans that don't follow stringent earthquake safety codes. That and a lack of expertise at the municipality level, where building plans get clearance, in assessing what exactly an earthquake safe building should be given local conditions.
I found a couple of links which point to these problems. This article explores how post-Bhuj earthquake, plans to revise and implement earthquake safety codes stalled as a result of bureaucratic red tape and political manipulations of development rules.
And this article describes the situation in Delhi which launched an ambitious seismic vulnerability micro-zonation mapping plan in 2001. It has still not been completed and revision of building safety regulations supposed to be based on that plan remain in limbo.
Meanwhile tens of thousands of new buildings have come up in an area classified as a seismically active zone, just 150 km from some major Himalayan faults. One can only guess at the safety standards being adhered to and the potentially catastrophic cost of this inaction.
Geology is part of the answer. The Haitian earthquake occurred closer to population centers and was shallower. So a very large population was exposed to violent ground shaking. In Chile the earthquake was farther away from large population centers with the most violent ground motion taking place at sea.
Apart from geology, one of the guests Eliana Loveluck who is a survivor of the 1960 Chilean earthquake offers this explanation:
Neil Conan: But Eliana Loveluck is still with us here in the studio. I wanted to ask you a question about these building codes. Is this a part of Chilean culture?
Ms. Loveluck: It is. In Chile, we grow up knowing about earthquakes, being told what to do in different situations. I always grew up knowing that if I was at the beach, and I saw water receding, I needed to run the other way because the water was coming back.
But I think what is very important to acknowledge is that Chile has always had a very strong infrastructure, and it has a very well-functioning government, and that infrastructure is prepared and constantly being reassessed in terms of preparedness for dealing with earthquakes.
The other thing that I think is very important to also acknowledge is that Chile is a country with very little corruption. It actually scores very close to the United States, and so it is not a country where you can go and bribe a builder to overlook the codes or anything like that....
Recent earthquake memories, education, better government institutions and low levels of corruption enabling preparedness plans to be effectively implemented.
Haiti suffered from both a geological misfortune of having the epicenter too close to population centers, but also from a total lack of preparedness, a virtual lack of institutional support and extreme poverty leading to poor quality constructions.
India falls somewhere in between Chile and Haiti. It has good institutions and a strong science and engineering backbone. The National Bureau of Standards have long ago formulated earthquake resistance building codes which have undergone periodic revisions. The National Information Center Of Earthquake Engineering at IIT Kanpur has a list of all the earthquake building codes.
So there is no lack of safety codes and regulations. Its the last point Ms. Loveluck points to that India fails miserably namely ....government apathy and corruption. Enforcement of rules is very poor. Its easy to bribe officials into overlooking construction plans that don't follow stringent earthquake safety codes. That and a lack of expertise at the municipality level, where building plans get clearance, in assessing what exactly an earthquake safe building should be given local conditions.
I found a couple of links which point to these problems. This article explores how post-Bhuj earthquake, plans to revise and implement earthquake safety codes stalled as a result of bureaucratic red tape and political manipulations of development rules.
And this article describes the situation in Delhi which launched an ambitious seismic vulnerability micro-zonation mapping plan in 2001. It has still not been completed and revision of building safety regulations supposed to be based on that plan remain in limbo.
Meanwhile tens of thousands of new buildings have come up in an area classified as a seismically active zone, just 150 km from some major Himalayan faults. One can only guess at the safety standards being adhered to and the potentially catastrophic cost of this inaction.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Environmental Impact Assessments In India Are Becoming A Joke
...time for another rant on the Environmental Impact Assessment ( EIA) process (which is required for clearing large developmental projects) in India.
What do you do to get a green signal for a development project in a bio-diverse wetland frequented by migratory birds?
Answer: Do the EIA in the summer months..when the wetlands are naturally drier and there are no winter migratory birds! Then file a report saying that there is no ecological value to this area...go ahead and build your project!
According to Dr Asad R. Rahmani of Bombay Natural History Society and Prof Asha Rajvanshi of the Wildlife Institute of India, that is what is happening in the case of the Naupada swamps in coastal Andhra Pradesh where an EIA report filed neglected to do a multi-year survey and instead considered only the period of 3 months from March to May.
How ludicrous.....how absurd can the process get?!!
The problem begins with how the state classifies the land. This piece of wetland is considered a "wasteland" by the district authorities. The hired consultants use that as a baseline and make no attempt to seriously evaluate the ecosystem.
That's how increasingly the EIA system seems to work...terms of reference and baselines are purposely kept narrow, limited and ill-considered and consultants with a past history of saying what the government wants to hear are favored. By relegating the EIA to a side-show with no real powers to halt a project or make its design conditional to the EIA finding, a culture of shoddy science, incompetence and sheer dishonesty is being encouraged.
Beyond popular articles in mainstream media the EIA is coming under some more serious scrutiny in science publications as well. In the January 25 2010 issue of Current Science Devendra Kumar Agrawal, Mahendra S. Lodhi and Shradha Panwar do a case study of the potential impact of planned hydroelectric projects in the Alaknanda catchment in Uttarakhand and conclude that the EIA process is inadequately equipped to evaluate the region wide ecological impact of these projects. The EIA considers each project as separate and its larger impact on adjoining areas is not included in the scope of the EIA study. This piecemeal approach does not consider cascading and other non-tangible effects of these projects.
The Ministry of Environment and Forest which has the final say on these reports and projects is applying different clearance standards for different issues.
Here is what the Minister of Environment and Forest Mr. Jairam Ramesh said recently about the decision to withhold introduction of Bt Bringal (Times of India February 10 2010):
Fine words..Mr Minister..but how about extending the same principles ...caution, precautionary principle based approach...independent science...satisfaction of both the public and the professional...to the EIA process?
Why has the EIA process been rendered so toothless that a project can begin even before the relevant EIA is completed..?
You Mr. Minister are overlooking and presiding over a grotesque perversion of science and the consequent loss of valuable biodiversity, ecological services and the livelihoods of people who depend on them.
India is a signatory to the Ramsar Agreement... a commitment to protect valuable wetlands.
Don't be a mute spectator.
What do you do to get a green signal for a development project in a bio-diverse wetland frequented by migratory birds?
Answer: Do the EIA in the summer months..when the wetlands are naturally drier and there are no winter migratory birds! Then file a report saying that there is no ecological value to this area...go ahead and build your project!
According to Dr Asad R. Rahmani of Bombay Natural History Society and Prof Asha Rajvanshi of the Wildlife Institute of India, that is what is happening in the case of the Naupada swamps in coastal Andhra Pradesh where an EIA report filed neglected to do a multi-year survey and instead considered only the period of 3 months from March to May.
How ludicrous.....how absurd can the process get?!!
The problem begins with how the state classifies the land. This piece of wetland is considered a "wasteland" by the district authorities. The hired consultants use that as a baseline and make no attempt to seriously evaluate the ecosystem.
That's how increasingly the EIA system seems to work...terms of reference and baselines are purposely kept narrow, limited and ill-considered and consultants with a past history of saying what the government wants to hear are favored. By relegating the EIA to a side-show with no real powers to halt a project or make its design conditional to the EIA finding, a culture of shoddy science, incompetence and sheer dishonesty is being encouraged.
Beyond popular articles in mainstream media the EIA is coming under some more serious scrutiny in science publications as well. In the January 25 2010 issue of Current Science Devendra Kumar Agrawal, Mahendra S. Lodhi and Shradha Panwar do a case study of the potential impact of planned hydroelectric projects in the Alaknanda catchment in Uttarakhand and conclude that the EIA process is inadequately equipped to evaluate the region wide ecological impact of these projects. The EIA considers each project as separate and its larger impact on adjoining areas is not included in the scope of the EIA study. This piecemeal approach does not consider cascading and other non-tangible effects of these projects.
The Ministry of Environment and Forest which has the final say on these reports and projects is applying different clearance standards for different issues.
Here is what the Minister of Environment and Forest Mr. Jairam Ramesh said recently about the decision to withhold introduction of Bt Bringal (Times of India February 10 2010):
"It is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary principle based approach till such time independent scientific studies establish to the satisfaction of both the public and the professional the safety of the product".
Fine words..Mr Minister..but how about extending the same principles ...caution, precautionary principle based approach...independent science...satisfaction of both the public and the professional...to the EIA process?
Why has the EIA process been rendered so toothless that a project can begin even before the relevant EIA is completed..?
You Mr. Minister are overlooking and presiding over a grotesque perversion of science and the consequent loss of valuable biodiversity, ecological services and the livelihoods of people who depend on them.
India is a signatory to the Ramsar Agreement... a commitment to protect valuable wetlands.
Don't be a mute spectator.
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