India approves projects in dash for growth, alarming green groups

GVK Power & Infrastructure

09/10/2014 22:00

* Huge hydropower plant cleared weeks after rejection 
    * Activists say environment being sacrificed in India 
    * Government says improving system, boosting development 
 
    By Tommy Wilkes 
    NEW DELHI, Oct 10 (Reuters) - In late August, India's 
environment ministry rejected a proposal to build what would be 
the country's largest hydropower plant in a remote and pristine 
part of the country's northeast because of the potential damage 
to an area rich in biodiversity. 
    Less than a month later and, according to two environment 
ministry officials, after pressure from Prime Minister Narendra 
Modi's office, permission was granted for the 3,000 megawatt 
Dibang plant, the construction of which will mean clearing some 
4,000 hectares (9,900 acres) of forest. 
    The plant is one of hundreds of projects, many of which were 
repeatedly rejected in the past, that have been approved since 
Modi came to power in May. 
    That trend has alarmed environmentalists, who say the 
country's natural habitat is under assault in the name of 
industrial development. 
    "The floodgates are open," said Sunita Narain, director 
general of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment 
(CSE). "We were in trouble with the last government and we are 
in even more trouble with this government. Rather than try and 
reform the system, they are picking at the edges." 
    In the five months since it came to power, Modi's government 
has relaxed several environmental rules to make it easier for 
companies to build new projects. 
    Small and mid-sized coal miners can now expand production by 
50 percent without public consent, and polluting industries can 
operate closer to national parks. 
    Other decisions have been devolved to state governments, 
which tend to be more open to polluting projects than New Delhi. 
    Consecutive Indian governments have been blamed for 
neglecting the environment and prioritising industrial projects, 
but critics say they see signs that Modi has at best an 
ambiguous attitude to environmental issues. 
    His government has tightened controls on funding for 
Greenpeace and reduced the number of independent members on a 
committee charged with assessing projects that lie in or close 
to protected wildlife areas.  ID:nL4N0P0384  
    In its defence, the government says it is not sacrificing 
India's natural habitat but approving projects which are 
necessary for the country's development, while ensuring proper 
checks and balances are put in place. 
    Modi won elections on a pledge to revive the economy and 
bring electricity to 400 hundred million Indians not connected 
to the grid. Hydropower plants like Dibang could provide more 
electricity to local people, as well as help tackle the 
country's chronic energy shortages. 
     
    FAVOURING DEVELOPMENT 
    The push to fast-track development comes as "India Inc." 
looks for Modi to make good on pledges to reform the system for 
clearances, which they complain has long held up construction of 
roads, factories and mines and stymied economic growth. 
    "There is no doubt that things (clearances) should be sped 
up," said Isaac George, chief financial officer at GVK Power & 
Infrastructure, which operates mines, power plants and airports. 
"But there should be a proper balance between industrialisation 
and the environment." 
    At the end of June, 298 projects were awaiting environmental 
approval, a backlog that Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar 
said last month he had subsequently cleared. Only a handful of 
those projects were rejected or deferred for further analysis. 
    By contrast, around 400 projects were given environmental 
clearance in 2013 under the last government, when it was on a 
pre-election drive to boost the economy, and around 100 in 2012, 
data compiled by CSE show. 
    Among projects granted approval to clear forests and replace 
them elsewhere were six leases for salt manufacturing in Modi's 
home state Gujarat that were rejected under the last government 
because they would lie close to a marine national park.  
    "We have cleared hundreds of projects. We don't keep count 
of how many," Javadekar said in a telephone interview. 
    He said his ministry was not sacrificing the environment in 
its push to clear projects, and pointed to the cancellation of 
46 industrial licences for units polluting the Ganges river, and 
tighter regulations on the heavily polluting cement sector. 
    "If the project is not environmentally friendly, it won't 
get clearance. We are favouring people, we are favouring 
development." 
    Concern about environmental damage wrought by a push to 
industrialise and raise living standards for India's 1.2 billion 
people is not new. Air pollution, poor sanitation and degraded 
lands cost the economy an estimated $61 billion a year, 
according to a 2013 World Bank study. 
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    DAMS, FLAMINGOS AND PHEASANTS 
    The huge Dibang hydro plant, first mooted in 2008 but twice 
rejected by the environment ministry's Forest Advisory Committee 
(FAC) in 2013 and this April, won approval last month to clear 
forest on condition the proposed height of the 288-metre 
concrete gravity dam be reduced by 20 metres, said a senior 
environment ministry official. 
    Following the FAC's concerns, however, the ministry rejected 
a plan in August to lower the dam by only 10 metres. That would 
have meant the amount of lost forested land falling 9 percent, 
rather than around 20 percent under the 20 metre reduction plan. 
    In an Aug. 28 letter seen by Reuters, the ministry said the 
10 metre proposal endangered a "rich mature forest ecosystem" 
with a "large number of endemic and endangered flora and fauna" 
and threatened local tribal groups dependent on the forests. 
    The impact on a national park downstream was yet to be 
studied, it said. 
    Modi's efforts to amend environmental rules have not all 
succeeded, however. 
    A move by his government to slash the number of independent 
members on the National Board for Wildlife, a statutory body 
chaired by the Prime Minister that can approve or block proposed 
projects close to or inside protected areas, was in breach of 
the law, India's Supreme Court ruled in August. 
    The court said decisions made at an Aug. 12-13 meeting of 
the board's standing committee, where, according to a person 
with direct knowledge of the meeting, about 130 of 140 projects 
were cleared, are to have no effect until its next hearing. 
    Planned projects include a twice-rejected road running near 
the Pakistan border and through "Flamingo City", Asia's largest 
breeding ground for flamingos, and a cement plant less than 4 km 
(2.5 miles) from the Majathal Wildlife Sanctuary, home of the 
endangered cheer pheasant. 
    The government has not made minutes from the August meeting 
public, and a ministry spokesperson did not respond to requests 
for comment on it. 
    "This road could doom the populations of flamingos across 
the subcontinent," said Prerna Bindra, a former board member who 
rejected the road in 2013. "The national board is supposed to 
have a very proactive conservation role. Very unfortunately, the 
whole system now seems to be geared for clearances." 
 
 (additional reporting by Aditi Shah in NEW DELHI; Editing by 
John Chalmers and Mike Collett-White) 
 ((thomas.wilkes@thomsonreuters.com; +91 114 178 1030; Reuters 
Messaging: thomas.wilkes.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)) 
 
Keywords: INDIA ENVIRONMENT/