Members of the Environment Impact Assessment Task Force, charged with making changes to EIA by the Planning Commission resigned over the unwillingness by the task force to hold public hearings. These members have now presented a public document for discussion.

10 Jan 2007

Dear friend:

In September 2006, The Planning Commission set up a EIA Task Force (TF), with Mr R Rajamani (Chairman), Dr Dilip Biswas, Mr Sagar Dhara, Mr Shyam Chainani, Ms Manju Menon as its members, to:

     Review current laws, policies, procedures and practices related to    EIA regimes in India, and recommend correctives.

     Review institutional and individual capacities available for conducting and assessing EIAs, in consultation with the TF on governance, and recommend correctives.

     Specifically, assess the measures in position and their effectiveness, for ensuring transparency and level of participation in the EIA process, in consultation with the TF on governance, and recommend correctives.

In its first meeting held on 13 Oct 2006, the TF decided to hold public hearings in 5 cities—Jorhat, Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi, one in each of the five major regions of India, to elicit public opinion on this subject.   Subsequently, the Planning Commission did not facilitate the holding of these hearings, so the two of us resigned from the TF as we felt that such hearings on this issue were vital.  We also decided to contribute to the process of improving environmental clearance procedures in India by continuing with the task we set out do as members of the Planning Commission TF, but now as individuals.

We are circulating a draft memorandum suggesting changes to the environmental clearance procedures in India for your comments.  The central thrust of the memorandum is to: a) Sharpen the EIA tool, b) Shift the responsibility of doing and submitting EIAs from project proponents to project impacted people, c) Begin decentralizing environmental decision making powers (grant of CFE/CFOs, which now vest with the PCBs) to local self-governments, while maintaining certain checks and balances by creating an autonomous and decentralized EIA Authority under the Union Government, that has environment clearance granting powers, d) Streamline environmental clearance procedures, e) Do capacity building at various levels and for different categories of people who wish to do/ appraise/ understand EIAs.

Based on your comments and that of others, we will modify the memorandum; and send it back to you to seek your consent to become a signatory of the revised memorandum.   The memorandum will then be sent to Planning Commission, Ministry of Environment and Forest and the Prime Minister's Office, as a document signed by all those who had conveyed their consent to become a signatory.

Please find attached the draft memorandum and the EIA notification of 2006.  If you have any queries, please feel free to email/ call us.  Kindly communicate to us by 27 Jan 2007: a) your comments and suggested modifications to the draft memorandum b) measures we should collectively take to see that the suggestions in the memorandum are implemented.  Please forward the draft memorandum and this cover letter to all those you feel are interested in this issue.

With kind regards.

Sincerely,