Cost-cutting and Environment Protection

The report of a round table discussion on the proposed National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) (“A Structure for Environment Governance: A Perspective”, EPW, 6 February 2010), while criticising the discussion paper of the Ministry of Environment and Forests for failing to properly state the problem that the NEPA is supposed to address, itself fails in this regard.

Even though it is stated in the report that environmental governance has come a cropper in the country because powerful commercial interests have prevailed over local and environmental interests, this important aspect is not adequately probed. Paying attention to sustainability of the local environment and the livelihoods of the poor as well as the wider concerns on global warming invariably increase the costs of establishment and operation of any enterprise, whether in the primary, secondary or tertiary sector of the economy.