Research area: Environmental Governance and Policy
EIA 2020: Two Steps Back…
Introduction
The Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoEFCC) published the draft Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification 2020 in the Official Gazette on 11 April 2020. If brought into force, it will replace the existing EIA Notification 2006. It has met with widespread public opposition. According to some reports, the Environment Ministry has received 17 lakh representations in response, and politicians across party lines have strongly opposed the draft. In this essay, Shibani Ghosh provides a brief overview of the environment clearance process under the EIA notification, and discusses four principal reasons why the 2020 draft is misconceived and should be withdrawn. She then contextualizes these reasons within the broader regulatory landscape of the 2006 notification. As India awaits far-reaching regulatory reforms, Ghosh proposes four ways in which the existing regulatory framework can be strengthened to achieve significant environmental and social gains.
Read moreLeveraging Existing Cohorts to Study Health Effects of Air Pollution on Cardiometabolic Disorders: India Global Environmental and Occupational Health Hub
Abstract
Air pollution is a growing public health concern in developing countries and poses a huge epidemiological burden. Despite the growing awareness of ill effects of air pollution, the evidence linking air pollution and health effects is sparse. This requires environmental exposure scientist and public health researchers to work more cohesively to generate evidence on health impacts of air pollution in developing countries for policy advocacy. In the Global Environmental and Occupational Health (GEOHealth) Program, we aim to build exposure assessment model to estimate ambient air pollution exposure at a very fine resolution which can be linked with health outcomes leveraging well-phenotyped cohorts which have information on geolocation of households of study participants. We aim to address how air pollution interacts with meteorological and weather parameters and other aspects of the urban environment, occupational classification, and socioeconomic status, to affect cardiometabolic risk factors and disease outcomes. This will help us generate evidence for cardiovascular health impacts of ambient air pollution in India needed for necessary policy advocacy. The other exploratory aims are to explore mediatory role of the epigenetic mechanisms (DNA methylation) and vitamin D exposure in determining the association between air pollution exposure and cardiovascular health outcomes. Other components of the GEOHealth program include building capacity and strengthening the skills of public health researchers in India through variety of training programs and international collaborations. This will help generate research capacity to address environmental and occupational health research questions in India. The expertise that we bring together in GEOHealth hub are public health, clinical epidemiology, environmental exposure science, statistical modeling, and policy advocacy.
Read moreDraft EIA notification dilutes environmental protections, is in denial of ecological crises
Exposure to Particulate Matter Is Associated With Elevated Blood Pressure and Incident Hypertension in Urban India
Abstract
Ambient air pollution, specifically particulate matter of diameter <2.5 μm, is reportedly associated with cardiovascular disease risk. However, evidence linking particulate matter of diameter <2.5 μm and blood pressure (BP) is largely from cross-sectional studies and from settings with lower concentrations of particulate matter of diameter <2.5 μm, with exposures not accounting for myriad time-varying and other factors such as built environment. This study aimed to study the association between long- and short-term ambient particulate matter of diameter <2.5 μm exposure from a hybrid spatiotemporal model at 1-km×1-km spatial resolution with longitudinally measured systolic and diastolic BP and incident hypertension in 5342 participants from urban Delhi, India, within an ongoing representative urban adult cohort study. Median annual and monthly exposure at baseline was 92.1 μg/m3 (interquartile range, 87.6–95.7) and 82.4 μg/m3 (interquartile range, 68.4–107.0), respectively. We observed higher average systolic BP (1.77 mm Hg [95% CI, 0.97–2.56] and 3.33 mm Hg [95% CI, 1.12–5.52]) per interquartile range differences in monthly and annual exposures, respectively, after adjusting for covariates. Additionally, interquartile range differences in long-term exposures of 1, 1.5, and 2 years increased the risk of incident hypertension by 1.53× (95% CI, 1.19–1.96), 1.59× (95% CI, 1.31–1.92), and 1.16× (95% CI, 0.95–1.43), respectively. Observed effects were larger in individuals with higher waist-hip ratios. Our data strongly support a temporal association between high levels of ambient air pollution, higher systolic BP, and incident hypertension. Given that high BP is an important risk factor of cardiovascular disease, reducing ambient air pollution is likely to have meaningful clinical and public health benefits.
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The interplay between the pandemic and pollution
Litigating Climate Claims in India
Summary
Jacqueline Peel and Jolene Lin’s informative assessment of climate litigation in the Global South is a vital and timely contribution to the growing literature on the issue. It relies on a definition of climate litigation that allows the authors to draw on a much larger set of cases from the Global South by including cases in which climate concerns are “at the periphery.” This essay examines climate litigation in India. Although the term “global warming” started appearing in Indian environmental judgments in the 1990s, climate litigation in India is of relatively recent provenance, and with a few exceptions, climate concerns are peripheral to other, more mainstream environmental issues. Peel and Lin analyze five Indian cases as part of their Global South docket; Ghosh expands this set by including fourteen more cases that she believes fit their article’s chosen definitional ambit. She classifies these cases into four categories based on the use of climate language—reference to climate change, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, or the international negotiations—in the courts’ judgment. Drawing from case law analysis and Indian environmental litigation, Ghosh makes observations about what one can interpret from the current set of climate cases, and predicts that while conditions are favorable for climate litigation in India to grow, in the near future climate claims are likely to remain peripheral issues.
Read moreThree ways by which Delhi’s Kejriwal govt can fulfil its promise to curb air pollution
The Environment (Regulation in India: Design, Capacity, Performance, Hart Publishing)
Summary
Environmental health across indicators in India is rapidly declining, and the state’s failure to regulate sources of, and causes for, environmental degradation has never been more apparent. The reasons for this failure are numerous and complex: conflicting interests in limited resources; inadequate regulatory capacity to design and enforce the law effectively; lack of interagency coordination; and environmental issues not being politically salient enough to trump competing policy interests and priorities. As the country grapples with an increasing array of environmental problems, it is an important moment in time to reflect on the nature and quality of the environmental regulation that is in place.
This chapter analyses the design, implementation, and enforcement of two environmental laws passed by the Parliament – the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974 and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981 – with a view to understanding the factors that contribute to the failure of pollution regulation in India. Section I analyses the regulatory landscape of pollution control in India, and examines the role of the main statutory environmental regulators, the Pollution Control Boards, in implementing and enforcing the Water Act and the Air Act. Section II explores the administrative and judicial tools available for the enforcement of pollution regulation. Section III outlines critical issues affecting the efficacy of pollution regulation in India. Finally the chapter proposes the way forward through incremental changes in the regulatory landscape which could lead to significant gains.
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The Ecological Costs of Doing Business: Environment, Energy and Climate Change
Summary
What perspective did the BJP government bring to the link between environment, energy and climate change on the one hand and development on the other, and what consequent actions has it taken? In this essay published in ‘Re-forming India: The Nation Today’, Penguin India, the authors assess the government’s actions in areas of environment, energy and climate change with a view to interpreting its track record.
Focusing less on environmental outcomes and more on the changes in direction introduced by the government, Dubash and Ghosh explore four themes. First, they examine the government’s focus on the ‘cost of doing business’ and ask whether reducing this cost has come at an environmental price. Second, they analyse cases in which an environment and energy agenda was driven by political imperatives, such as around energy access or Ganga rejuvenation. Third, they explore whether and how the government has addressed the emergent big picture environment and energy questions that will shape India’s future, beyond immediate regulatory changes. Finally, they examine its diplomacy in the areas of climate change and energy, and reflect on what the accumulated record implies in terms of India’s environmental governance.