A Climate Change: Jairam Ramesh Stokes Debate
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Image: indiatodayimagescom
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airam Ramesh
Budget Allocation
Renewable energy ministry allocation up 61 percent to Rs. 1,000 crore; Rs. 500 crore for solar and small hydro projects; Rs. 500 crore for Ganga River Basin Authority (environment ministry)
Big Idea
Regulator for coal, India’s preferred fuel for electricity generation. National Clean Energy Fund to finance R&D in clean energy
Long-term Goal
Global leadership in solar energy; targets 20,000 MW by 2022
There is no doubt that Jairam Ramesh loves action. There is also little doubt that he often provokes extreme reactions. Government grapevine says that the prime minister’s special envoy on climate change, Shyam Saran, quit because of differences with Ramesh, who is environment minister. Saran is said to have opposed Ramesh’s bending India’s stance to a more accommodating one vis-à-vis developed countries at international climate change talks.
Under the silver-maned, hard-texting Ramesh, the ministry has shaken off its inherited somnolence to reposition itself as a powerful entity, quickly removing the cobwebs in regulation, bringing rigour to monitoring, having dialogues with stakeholders and building institutions to bring a scientific focus to the portfolio. With the Prime Minister behind him, Ramesh has so far brooked no opposition. His ministry has earned the reputation of being one of the most dynamic ones with unprecedented transparency and a willingness to engage in debate.
Wildlife biologist M.D. Madhusudan remembers the first meeting of ecologists and scientists just after Ramesh took charge at Paryavaran Bhavan. “I will make the decisions here. You may like some of them and you may not like some. But what I assure you is complete transparency,” he told them.
The minister kept his word. He famously replaced the wooden door to his office with a glass one. The ministry put all important documents online. Now flashes of “New” constantly blink on its home page. The quality of action, however, does not always match the frenzy on the surface.
“There is no doubt that our dialogue with the ministry has improved, but there is no substantive improvement in environment assessment and clearances,” says Kanchi Kohli of environmental action group Kalpavriksh. Kohli, who keeps a close watch on the environment impact assessment (EIA) of the ministry, says that it continues to clear projects with impunity. The ministry approved 59 mining projects within six months of Ramesh taking over. It also cleared 41 construction plans and industrial estates and 40 projects in the coal sector.
A New Framework
A ministry official says EIA issues will be ironed out once the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and the National Environment Protection Authority (NEPA) are in place. The official says that the NGT and NEPA will be the pillars of monitoring and regulation in the country.
The NEPA is expected to be a professionally managed, Parliament-created authority that will be independent of the ministry. It will work on the ‘polluter-pays’ and ‘precautionary’ principles on all matters related to environment in India, mainly project clearances and enforcement of environment laws. The Central Pollution Control Board and the state regulators will report to the authority. While NEPA will carry out monitoring and compliance, the NGT will settle disputes.
“Enforcement has been the basic weakness of our environmental process in India. The idea of a statutory and independent NEPA entrusted with this critical functioning cannot be disputed,” says A. Damodaran, who teaches economics and social sciences at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
Damodaran, who has previously worked in the Indian environment ministry as well as the US Environment Protection Agency (USEPA) — which NEPA copies — in the mid-1990s, says that the real issue in India is failure of enforcement at the local level.
“We need to have state and local level agencies that provide space for local governments and communities to act. Clearly, state governments have to be enthusiastic at their levels as well,” he says.
Ramesh is closely working with the state governments on most issues, say his ministry colleagues. When he had to take a call on allowing cultivation of Bt brinjal, one of the feedback he went by was from states. “Every chief minister wrote to us not to allow it [Bt brinjal],” says one official.
The minister is said to be actively engaging with the states on other issues too. Immediately after he took over, he visited national parks in every state and major institutions such as the Forest Research Institute. Every time he goes to a state, he holds talks with the local minister, the forest conservator and other department officials, says an official who travels with him often.
Conservationists say that now there is a feeling that at least someone is listening. Koustubh Sharma, regional field biologist for the Snow Leopard Trust, remembers a consultation meeting on Bengal Tiger where a ministry official came up with the idea that you should turn people living in forests into protectors. “After listening to everyone he said, ‘I realise that I was completely wrong. It cannot work the way I thought’,” says Sharma.
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