Narendra Modi govt to implement eco-friendly, growth friendly policies Prakash Javadekar, minister for environment, forests and climate change has said that environmental norms would be made more stringent and practical keeping in mind the enormity of the problem and issues involved and industry concerns. The stakeholders would be consulted in the process so as to ensure complete compliance once the norms are laid down. Referring to the revision of norms related to the cement industry undertaken recently, the minister said that these norms were implemented taking into account the concerns of the industry. The minister stated this while addressing the Sustainable & Inclusive Solutions Summit held in New Delhi last week. The event was organised by the CII-ITC Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development, with The Financial Express as its print media partner. Elaborating further, the minister said that the cooperation of the industry stakeholders was critical in the context of monitoring, evaluation and implementation of environmental norms. This would enable the government to implement “eco friendly and growth friendly” policies. At the same time the ministry in the last three months had undertaken a number of measures to ensure compliance, timelines that laid to transparency and positivity in decision making. Referring to the proposals related to online application and tracking of environment and forests proposals, Javadekar said around 250 online applications for TORs for environmental clearances had been received. The ministry was taking the necessary measures to fast track the process of regulatory clearances for a faster economic growth, while ensuring that development and conservation of environment go hand in hand and in a transparent manner. These measures were intended to bring in more transparency, efficiency and accountability in grant of regulatory clearances. Javadekar also emphasised that the use of technology, creation of infrastructure and their proactive and sustainable management would ensure a clean environment in the future. The minister specifically referred to the decision taken on installing round the clock sensors for monitoring pollution and flow of affluents into the Ganges. The minister emphasised upon the seamless integration of economic growth, human development and ecological protection. YC Deveshwar, past president, CII, chairman, CII-ITC Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development Advisory Council and chairman, ITC, highlighted how the world has exhausted its budget of resources for the year and will now be living on borrowed resources from the future. Fifty years ago it was using three-fourth of the available resources and today it uses more than can be replaced. Solving this problem is not the onus of a single of society, however, business he felt can play an important role, saying, “Business can make a very large contribution, not because it has the financial resource, but because it has a managerial resource, it has innovative capacity, and because business has demonstrated that if an objective is set, it finds ways and mechanisms to be able to achieve those objectives.” According to Andrew Steer, president and CEO, World Resources Institute, we live in a good news, bad news, good news world. The good news is the phenomenal progress the world, and India, has made —doubling of incomes, halving of poverty, increased access to education and health care, gains in life expectancy, reductions in infant mortality, to name a few. India itself has reported a growth rate of 7%, has added 800 million people to the workforce every year, in terms of purchasing power parity is third in the world, and 300 million people have been lifted out of poverty. However, it is this progress that has also led to the bad news, leading to great pressures on natural resources. The third good news he said is, “there doesn’t need to be a tradeoff. Research is overwhelmingly pointing in the direction today that says you can actually grow, and you can grow green at the same time.” He emphasised that if we improve resources efficiency, we will not grow better and live better. In his address, UK Sinha, chairman, Securities and Exchange Board of India, invited CII to develop a roadmap on integrated reporting for discussion with SEBI. Sinha clarified that SEBI will not regulate disclosures that demand integrated reporting. He stressed on the need to first create awareness and build the environment that is experienced with integrated reporting. He suggested this approach based on SEBI’s experience in the past of gradually improving transparency via various clauses of the listing agreement. At the two-day summit, there were also discussions on topics like 100 smart cities, being water smart and how appropriately nature’s capital is to be used. All deliberations the CII meet pointed at a positive change, that is, the government and the corporations understand the importance of sustained efforts to save the environment and they understand that it cannot be achieved by one entity.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 17:26:09 +0000
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