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Lavassa incident if it is to be covered under the EIA Notification, what were local authorities doing till now?

There are a few aspects highlighted

1. lack of communicability between the central, state and local governing bodies.
2. burocracy has failed times without number in the country and this incident will only add one more number.
3. the country in which we have slum clearance boards and the Mumbai City where almost or may be half of the Census count is living in slums - i.e. poor quality of houses as per the WHO standards of housing requirement. Affluent styled housing have come as unwanted thing on its development.
4. Look back in the verbatim of the Notification which literally means that if the Govt itself wants to provide proper housing to poor people needs EC having an individual carpet area of 50 sq.mts. each!! Whereas a house of a rich man can go upto thousands of sq. mts. for a rich man need not have EC!!
5. Anil Ambani's Antilla or whatever is now termed did it have EC / CRZ hurdles?
6. The classification of the activities want more than 20000 sq.mts of housing to be cleared through EC - What about an industrial activity not covered under EC and having more than this threshold value? Is construction activity for industrial project less harmful for industrial projects?
7. The country where housing deficit is a big question, such provisions for clearances have to be removed.

The policymakers have to realize these things and be rational

My roots with nature are so weak that I fail to understand. . .

A lot is being talked about the sustainable environment in Himalayas and its management these days. There is no doubt that it is getting affected. But how do we manage it?

On this point the question mark exists as previous efforts have yielded little and attempts to improve other services, be it infrastructure, agriculture, irrigation, water supply and to large extent man’s greed to make a few quick bucks fast have seriously impacted the environment in Himalayas.

So what is the way out?

It is projects  sustainability so that it runs on its own long after the project is over.

Unfortunately, the word ”sustainability” has become a fad these days. Almost all conservation projects talk about sustainability without knowing how to make conservation projects sustainable in reality.

If we look  at various projects be joint forest management, medicinal plants conservation, biodiversity conservation, cold desert development, pasture land development, social forestry and all other conservation projects, most of them are made to look  sustainable till the funds keep flowing in and once the project gets over and funds dry up, sustainability also dries up as if affected by a severe drought or washed away by a powerful tsunami.

Some conservationists contend that sustainability of the project is time specific and the project had achieved its target when it was running actively & they are not concerned about it  once the project gets over. But is it the power of sustainability or money flow that keeps the project running? Doesn’t sustainability mean long-lasting or is the word directly proportional to money flow?

Alas! What became of the word “sustainability” which was splashed all over the pages when the project proposals were made and highlighted in a big way while submitting the project? Was it then misinterpreted or is it too big a word that anything and everything can hide behind it.

Actually, what all that is needed in the end is a crisp report camouflaging the small achievements as big,  juggling with data and a final report declaring that overall goals of the project have been achieved.

Now is any organization ready to open the can of worms of current sustainability of their previous projects ? Has there been any assessment of the post impact of the project, say after 2-3 years after the project was completed to know whether the sustainability is still there or has fizzled out.

Mostly no, because organizations don’t get money to do assessment of projects long completed. They only get money for new projects also no organization wants to count its failures as it dents their standing & maybe prospectus to get  future  projects also dampens.

So it is time to write  a  new project proposal, splash it with high- falutin words, some fancy ideas which can be made to look innovative but have loose bonding with real goals and sustainability.

Cheers

MoEF's intervention and the order for demolition of the building proves many things:

1. Ineffectiveness of the entire process of EIA / CRZ.
2. Ineffectiveness of the system in which the CRZ / EC and EIA are operational.
3. Looking back at current events particularly in Maharashtra we have three examples where the process has seen troubles Mumbai Airport, Adarsh and Lavassa City. This goes to prove that the procedure has not accounted certain things.
4. It might be harsh to put in words but Maharashtra is either having troubles in implementation or the issues highlighted from other parts of the country are not seen so critically by media.
5. One sided and personalized views of committee and its members.

The other discussion initiated by Dr Modak has also pointed at the same thing.

Dr Modak has been extremely liberal in views. The issues which have been highlighted to us in the recent past point the finger only at one thing - THE FUTILITY OF PROCESS THAT HAS BEEN PROPAGATED. THE ENTIRE PROCESS HAS TO BE REPLACED WITH A SET OF EMPS RELEVANT TO THE ASPECTS.

We see that only Government officials are at the root of the failures in most cases. This is due to the fact that procedures are stipulated in a manner where people who temper these procedures are not traced easily. The entire process of clearance since 2006 has been seen by project proponets as a hurdle and not as a tool owing to the results.

To put an example one PP got say 27 TORs from X consultant (PP may be a PSU), the other PP received 31 TORs from Y consultant (PP may be a SSI) considered that Y had hired cheapest consultant around. Efforts required to comply would be more or less the same.

Then where is the elite class of consultant required when the result is expected to be the same.

Reduction in procedural intricacies can reduce the fatigue to PP. We need to learn lessons on either sides of the process.

Dear all,

 can any body help me out in giving the structure of model EIA for Coal related projects.

(like coal washery, coke oven plants etc)

Thanks & warm regards,

Dear Friends,

              Season’s Greetings!

Please find enclosed the Bi-monthly report on sea turtle andtheir habitat conservation programme of APOWA in Orissa.

We are looking forward your feedback.  

Many thanks and regards,

Bijaya Kumar Kabi

Action for Protection of Wild Animals (APOWA)

Orissa

 E-mail-bijayakabi@apowa.org

Bi-monthly%20report_turtle_APOWA.pdf

Dear all

wish you a succesfull and meaningfull great new year ...2011

I Wish all members of Indian Environment Network and their family A HEALTHY WEALTHY AND PEACEFUL NEW YEAR 2011

International Year of Biodiversity 2010
                  to
International Year of Forest 2011
Celebrating Forests for People
http://www.un.org/en/events/iyof2011/

Sabu

Dear All,

Greetings of the Day!!!

CEPT University is identified as Anchor Institute in Infrastructure Sector by Industries Commissionerate, Government of Gujarat.

Under Anchor Institute, Faculty of Technology, CEPT University is going to conduct  to  4 days workshop on, “Advanced Water & Wastewater Treatment Technologies”, from 19^th January 2011 to 22^nd January, 2011 at CEPT Campus.              

CEPT University is invited you to participate in the workshop. Only limited seats are available, make your registration as early as possible. 

For brochure -  Brochure%20of%20the%20workshop.pdf

Schedule of the workshop - Workshop%20Schedule.pdf

Every professional in the field around is running to get thr coveted accreditation. I would like to have the following things highlighted.

1. The original Notification of 14-09-2006 never called for mandatory accreditation.
2. The compulsion of QCI accreditation has been implemeted by an office memo(OM). There have been so many amendments to the original notification.
3. Legality of the OM becoming a mendate has to be checked. We must recollect the fact that in case of CEPI the development could have been stalled through an OM(Jan 2010). Later things got diluted to a significant extent very soon. This proved that OM had got something basically wrong.
4. The QCI accreditation team for accreditation is not having resources to evaluate. For example, one of the activities infrastructure projects like road development or canal network where the assessment of a professinal "team" of QCI assesses the aspirant consultant without a single professional who is experienced himself of having executed an infrastructure project.
5. This is proved by the fact that approaching the deadline they are not through to evaluation of their first chunk of accreditation, i.e. organizations which went in process before 30-06-2010 are still awaiting evaluation.
6. The scheme in itself has been framed to monopolize the profession and comes in clear violation of constitutional rights of our country.
7. QCI has to remain focussed to their business not interfere to the Ministry's powers to mutate / break / separately interprete any content in the Notification verbatim. This is done by QCI with activities being broken up further from the Notification.
8. If all Ministries start working on OMs where is the necessity of Lok Sabha or Notification. This sort of operation should have been challnged in Court of Law.
9. The project proponent (PP) is not exempted from any process and there the EAC puts forward the governance of the Notification. So the route of convenience (for the officials only) is used.
10. State EACs have only been given an indication to follow the NABET / QCI accredited consultants. This was probably with a consideration that majority of development projects like housing projects, area development projects, local road widening projects etc. where local considerations are likely to out score the major environmental issues would be better dealt by local people with simple considerations. This type of procedural requirements will only add complications and thereby corruption only.
11. Rethink really for improving the quality of the EIA and worthiness thereof has any connection with QCI. I remember in my early days as professional in 1989 also EIAs were there and even without accreditation they were in a much better quality and the motive was served. Since 1994 reports have been prepared through official procedures and nothing objectionable has ever gone without being accounted for.

The enforcement through QCI appears to be in bigger interest of QCI rather than the EC process.

Quality EIAs and better EMPs can also be availed from people who are not necessarily extra-ordinary professionals. Ministry has to rethink over the simplification of the process in better interest of the progress of the Nation.

EIA has been legislated in India since 1994 as a requirement for Environmental Clearance (EC). We all know that in most cases, conduct of EIA is perceived more as a "permitting tool" than a process that stimulates alternatives, anticipates impacts/risks and prepares a prevention and control strategy/plan and importantly "value adds" to the original project/program proposal.

EIA reports are often prepared on the fly.

The EIA process is expected to be "concurrent" to project development and not a "terminal" activity when all configurations of the project are frozen. EIA process is also expected be transparent in communicating project and impact/risk related information to stakeholders and seek their involvement. Ground realities are however often different. How could we overcome this limitation?

One of major weaknesses of our EIA system is our project-limited approach. We haven't yet legislated regional, sectoral/strategic EIAs. We therefore miss consideration of cumulative and regional impacts and hence fail to safeguard environment on a regional basis. Our development plans for instance fail to mainstream environmental and social considerations 

A lot can be done to improve the present system. I would like to open a discussion on this topic.

Phytoremediation is the use of plants and plant processes to remove, degrade or render harmless hazardous materials present in the soil or water. Phytoremediation is a low cost, solar energy driven clean up technique.

The population increasing continuously and so we need more land, water, space and food across the world. Due to rapid industrialization and random urbanization environmental pollution has become a great problem.
There is an increasing trend in areas of land, surface waters and ground waters
affected by contaminants from industrial, military and agricultural activities.
The build up of toxic pollutants affects the natural resources as well as
ecosystem. The pollutants which affect our soil and water are basically organic
and inorganic pollutants.

Toxic heavy metal pollution is much more serious problem due to the non-degradable nature of metals. At high concentration all the metals are toxic to both animals and plant. Many diseases
like Itai-Itai and Minimata are very much famous caused by heavy metals.

There are various ways to mitigate the environmental pollution. Phytoremediation is the use of plants and plant processes to remove, degrade or render harmless hazardous materials present in
the soil or water. Phytoremediation a low cost, solar energy driven clean up
technique. Phytoremediation used for the removal of pollutants from both soil
and water. Some of the ornamental trees which have aesthetic effect and
tolerant to pollution have been screened and recommended for planting along the
roads like Ficus
(Ficus religiosa), Bergad (Ficus benghalensis), Neem (Azarachtica indica), Arjun (Terminalia arjuna), normal"">Techtona grandis etc. These trees also used as green
belts for minimizing air pollution by filtering, absorbing and adsorbing pollutants
in an effecting manner. Phytoremediation can be used to cleanup metals,
pesticides solvents, explosive, crude oil, polyaromatic hydrocarbon and land
fill leachates. Because of other commercial methods like microbial
decomposition the metals can not be degraded so phytoremediation is very
efficient method to remove / mitigate metal pollution.

After Phytoremediation:

The plants used for the phytoremediation do not remain to take as food or fodder for human as well as for animals. These plants burn in the safe site or dump out the areas where the buildings are going to be construct or it is also possible to extract the heavy metals by metallurgical processes.

A new research is also going on to generate bioenergy from the biomass produced by the phytoremediator plants after phytoremediation process. There are many high biomass producing plants like Ricinus communis (Castor) and Jatropha curcus has very good potential to accumulate the heavy metals which are non degradable and very hazardous (Studies are going on in our Lab also) and these plants are also using to produce the biofuel from the seeds. These plants having high biomass, may be used for biogas (Bioenergy from biomass).

Why we are planning throughout the year to conserve, to save and also to restore theenvironment? All these planning are not bad but, if we start the work for thesolutions of the problems at least the works which are not required much money,pain and time also. This will be done in parallel with our personal works.Every one want to do make the environment clean but only few persons are reallydoing the things which make the same. So it is kind request to all the membersto do at least some work per day with “E-workand Paper work” which help to make our environment healthy in our dailyrunning life.

Not a lot of people like this season. I myself claim to have a complicated love-hate relationship with Winter, loving the delightful snow-scapes, and grunting at the surprisingly deep reach of those icy winds. Too bad, it takes a lot of determination to wake up early enough to appreciate the depth and clarity of mornings' freshest thoughts written in the sobering gray sky.. There is no real beauty in this world, but merely infinite perceptions of it. The bare trees, skimpily dressed in snow, in penance for some unknown sins, standing Stoic in the unforgiving winds form part of one such definition. Every landscape clad in the robes of this new starkness, rural, sub-urban, or downtown, represents the pinnacle of this beautifully solemn season.

Solemnity itself, however finds its disciples, if you will, in every aspect of winter's loathed entity. There should be strong reasons why the wintry chill of Himalayan peaks is a lure to sages who seek places devoid of the restless, endless, passions of a life lived amongst crowds. In the solitude of a snow clad mountain peak, one may listen to the voices of silence. Standing on a forest floor on a December night, looking through the frail branches at a spread of stars, one may connect again with Nature, meekly braving Her worst emotion - a cold, distant, colorless anonymity.

Anonymous exclamations would be worth discarding without analysis, but Henry David Thoreau, a reasonably smart fellow, examines in 'Walden' that all mundane endeavors - work, food, shelter, and clothing etc, are centered around maintaining the bodily heat. How hard is it, really, to keep oneself warm? Winter is after all, just another season.. Now, no reason for panic just because the miniscule planet of ours, the Earth moved barely a few intergalactic inches away from the Sun in their ceaseless cosmic dance? How hard it is, indeed, to keep warm.. If it were easy, Hell really should be frozen and thick with ice, and not a burning inferno as often assumed...

Scientists know that outer space is bone chilling cold, and heat exists only in stars, and the planets that are briefly blanketed in the warmth of their suns. We have fortunately noted that all energy in the universe is constant, so logically, there is always a means to get warm. Unfortunately, we have not yet discovered whom all the heat belongs to, since everyone (even the dead stones on the ground) is gaining and losing heat all the time... At this junction, a different strain of earthlings observe that the Ultimate Source of all energy, all 'heat', is God - the Supreme Ultimate Truth. Well, don't turn the pages skeptically already, all it takes to have faith is a single snowflake - such a simple, delicate, joyous, beautifully unique artistry humbly bespeaks a Supreme Architect, a Supreme Energy Conservationist, a Supreme Scientist...

We are too quick to condemn such theses as mere sentimentalism, or ill-advised inquiry. How is it that in the eons of discovery, we have not yet sought the key question? "Where does my living heat come from, ultimately?" As is it often said, faith and love are not 'arguments' that could be logically dismembered or constructed... However, religion is more than just 'blind faith'. What the world has tossed aside in the name of secularism is not just blind practice of meaningless superstitions, but a wealth of answers, remaining out of reach to the inquisitive seekers. After all, Ultimate knowledge is not just the mechanics of heat, of how we are keeping alive, but the essence of why we are living at all... A very important question. Just something to think about before you step outside into the chill..

The world over, the human beings are paying the cost of economic development in terms of the health of self and environment. Global warming, the result of greenhouse gas emissions, is the price the world pays for its ruthless growth. Similarly ozone hole depletion, climate change, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity are some of the few environmental problems the world is facing these days.

When one thinks about it, in today’s modernized society, life without the purchase of products and services appears impossible (unless we plan to go back to a prehistoric age). A demand for products creates their supply. Keeping this in mind, one can go to the extent of saying that all environmental concerns we face are due to consumerism. While it is impossible to survive without consuming, it then logically seems that it would be for our greater good that our consumerism be ‘green’ than otherwise.

The gap between green concern and green consumerism has been widened by the different orientations given to green consumerism by various segments of the society. These differences in perceptions and ideologies have intensified the debate on whether green consumerism is a strategy to save the earth or is it just a fancy of the developed nations.The green products still face the controversy regarding their purpose and credibility

The world over, the human beings are paying the cost of economic development in terms of the health of self and environment. Global warming, the result of greenhouse gas emissions, is the price the world pays for its ruthless growth. Similarly ozone hole depletion, climate change, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity are some of the few environmental problems the world is facing these days.

When one thinks about it, in today’s modernized society, life without the purchase of products and services appears impossible (unless we plan to go back to a prehistoric age). A demand for products creates their supply. Keeping this in mind, one can go to the extent of saying that all environmental concerns we face are due to consumerism. While it is impossible to survive without consuming, it then logically seems that it would be for our greater good that our consumerism be ‘green’ than otherwise.

The gap between green concern and green consumerism has been widened by the different orientations given to green consumerism by various segments of the society. The differences in perceptions and ideologies have intensified the debate on whether green consumerism is a strategy to save the earth or is it just a fancy of the developed nations .mny issues realted to the credibility and purpose of green products is misleading.

It is well known that the wetlands have rich biodiversity than any other habitat of the world. Based on the approval of National Wetlands Committe held on 16.03.2009, total 115 Wetlands have been identified to conserve Wetlands under National Wetland Conservation program judiciously. Where as almost every village consists of at least one small or big Wetlands, which gives shelter to amphibians as well as aquatic lives. These Wetlands are under threat due to echroachment or siltation. Hence, before going to loss their (village level Wetlands) identity, we should have a very micro level policy to conserve those Wetlands, which is not yet identified judiciously.

Your feed back may give an idea to restore such unkown Wetlands (Native of Creatures).