Polluters must pay for Sustainable Development: Manmohan

By Deepak Arora

NEW DELHI, Feb 3: Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has called for a sustainable development strategy that incentives facing all economic decision makers must encourage them to act in a manner that is environmentally benign.

Addressing the 11th Delhi Sustainable Development Summit here on Thursday, Dr Singh said the solution lies in two dimensions. First, we must put in place a structure of regulatory policies which will prevent potentially damaging behaviour. This is what we do by setting regulatory standards and enforcing them.

Second, he said was the principle that the polluters must pay. This would discourage the polluters and also provide a means of financing the corrective steps necessary to counter the pollution caused.

The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, was also honoured with the Sustainable Development Leadership Award which he received at the hands of President Hamid Karzai, Mr. James Michel, Mr Leonel Fernández.

Following is the text of the Prime Minister’s address on the occasion:

“The theme of the Summit, “Tapping Local Initiatives and Tackling Global Inertia” reflects the fact that we have to act at two levels, - the local and the global – in dealing with the issue of sustainable development. We require collective action at both levels so that local good and global good can be aligned and can reinforce each other.

The concern for ecological sustainability is not a new phenomenon. In fact, India has a long cultural tradition of frugality and simple living in harmony with nature. All great religions which have traversed in our country have preached the unity of humankind with nature.

An ancient hymn from the Upanishads reminds us of this.

Peace on earth, peace in space, peace for the trees, peace towards cattle, peace towards goats.

Unfortunately this symbiotic relationship weakens as societies develop and as population begins to rise. But modern societies cannot get away from the fact that if they damage the environment in the pursuit of material gains today, they do so by risking the well being of future generations to come.

That to my mind summarises the development challenge which the emerging market countries face. Let me share some thoughts with you on how we could approach this problem.

The central principle that must be enshrined in any sustainable development strategy is that incentives facing all economic decision makers must encourage them to act in a manner that is environmentally benign.

The solution lies in two dimensions. First, we must put in place a structure of regulatory policies which will prevent potentially damaging behaviour. This is what we do by setting regulatory standards and enforcing them. I must emphasise that standards are not enough. They must also be enforced which is often difficult. It is also necessary to ensure that these regulatory standards do not bring back the License Permit Raj which we sought to get rid of in the wake of economic reforms of the early nineties.

Second, we must deal with residual pollution that may be caused despite regulatory efforts. The principle that should be followed in such cases is that the polluters must pay. This will discourage the polluters and also provide a means of financing the corrective steps necessary to counter the pollution caused. We in India are trying to do this by setting appropriate standards in several areas especially in the most energy using industries. As a general rule we are trying to establish the principle that the polluter must pay though that is much more difficult to achieve in all cases. Last year, for example we introduced a cess of 5% on the use of coal both domestic or imported to build the corpus of a National Clean Energy Fund.

Another aspect of sustainability is the management of common pool resources. In India, as in many other developing countries, indigenous tribes, cattle rearing groups, as well as cultivators use and access common pool resources like forests, water bodies, pastures and farmland without clearly defined property rights. The traditional wisdom on the management of such commons was that they would tend to get over-used if individuals were left free to exploit them for their individual ends and therefore, these common resources, and related environmental matters, should be managed by central authorities and governments.

This conventional view is challenged now by new research in economics, ecology and the environment. The Noble Laureate, Dr. Elinor Ostrom and her associates have demonstrated that in such situations local action for managing common resources through cooperative activities by small user groups can lead to optimal results provided the stakeholders are adequately informed and also empowered to act. This has profound implications for policy makers.

In India, we enacted landmark legislation in 2006 popularly called the Forest Rights Act that seeks to assure the rights of millions of tribal and other forest dwellers by restoring to them both individual rights to cultivated forest land and community rights over common property resources. We hope this will spur local initiative on a sustainable use of resources, conservation of bio-diversity and maintenance of ecological balance.

Needless to say, capacity building is a major issue in any such effort. Effective village level planning and decision making can only occur if capacities are built up at the local level. This is clearly an area where much more needs to be done. We are trying to restructure the implementation of our development programmes to strengthen local bodies and empower them to act in their common collective interest.

The growth in environmental awareness and the capacity to manage local environmental problems is a very positive development. However, local or national action would be of no avail when the externalities cross natural boundaries, as in the case of climate change.

For example, even if India were able to eliminate all its greenhouse gas emissions, we will not make a significant difference to our climate since our emissions account for only 4% of the global total. The solution for this particular problem clearly lies in coordinated global action.

Our view has been that those who have been primarily responsible for the build up of greenhouse gases and who also have the greatest capacity to act should bear the brunt of the responsibility. Developing nations are obviously much less culpable, and have a much greater need for continued growth. These countries should be helped to achieve sustainable development paths.

The most recent Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC at Cancun in Mexico did not resolve these problems, but it did produce some modest results. I compliment Mexico and its leadership for its outstanding leadership and stewardship of the Summit, and for achieving some forward movement. This shows that with collective will, building a meaningful international consensus is still possible even though it is turning out to be more difficult than before.

India particularly welcomes the agreement on the setting up of a network of technology innovation centres under the UNFCCC to foster local adaptation and mitigation measures. India had proposed this at the very outset of the current round of multilateral negotiations.

India will continue to play a constructive and responsible role in the on-going negotiations and will work with the international community to find practical, pragmatic and equitable solutions.

I would also like to emphasise that even as we wait for meaningful agreements on global mitigation action, we in India have committed ourselves to keeping our per capita consumption below the average for the industrial countries. This is an important commitment since it ensures that if industrial countries do more themselves to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, which they should, they also automatically ensure that our emissions will also be contained. In fact, the faster the industrialised countries reduce their per capita emissions, the quicker will be the self imposed constraint which requires action in our country.

We are also taking action on our own in the form of a National Action Plan on Climate Change. A broad objective that we have set is to reduce the emissions intensity of our GDP by 20% between 2005 and 2020. We have already launched seven missions in the following areas. These include: energy efficiency, solar energy, sustainable habitat, water, sustaining the Himalayan ecosystem, agriculture and strategic knowledge for climate change. We will shortly launch the last of the 8 National Missions under the Plan, which is called Green India, which will result in the regeneration of 6 million hectares of degraded forest land.

We are currently engaged in preparing for the Twelfth Five Year Plan which will cover the period 2012-2017. The Plan will focus on specific initiatives needed to put our development on a path consistent with low carbon growth. Energy efficiency and exploitation of renewable energy sources will receive a special emphasis.

India, China and many other developing countries have all responded with significant voluntary goals and specific plans on emission intensity reduction. But, if we have to tackle global inertia, we will need to see clear commitments from the industrial countries on emission reduction targets for 2020 that are consistent with the Copenhagen goal of containing the likely temperature increase to no more than 2 degree centigrade or less. We do not as yet have a response from the industrialised countries which is consistent with meeting that objective. So, here is a viable agenda for concerted global action to deal with the problem of climate change.

In the final analysis, we have to recognise that the world must move away from production and consumption patterns which are carbon-intensive and energy-intensive. Without this shift in the patterns of energy generation and use, ecologically sustainable development will remain mostly a pious aspiration if not merely a buzz word. We have to make changes in our lifestyles, particularly in the developed world, and learn to make do with less. In developing countries, poverty eradication will have to be linked to the availability of clean, renewable and affordable energy. I believe that charting these new pathways is not beyond our collective imagination. Life as we know it on our beautiful planet is at stake.

With these words, I wish the deliberations at the Summit all success.”

UN report lauds India for adding 300,000 hectares of forest every year

NEW YORK, Feb 2: Asia is leading afforestation activity in the world with a significant contribution from India which is adding 300,000 hectares of forest every year, a senior UN official said. "I would highlight India, which still has important population growth. The forests in India are growing at 300,000 hectare per annum," Eduardo Rojas Briales, Forestry Director of Food and Agriculture Organisation told journalists on Wednesday.

According to the 'State of the World's Forests' report, published by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, five countries -- India, China, Australia, Indonesia and Myanmar –- had the largest forested area in Asia and Pacific region. These countries accounted for 74% of the forest in the region, with China and Australia alone accounting for almost half the forest area of the region.

In the Asia and Pacific region, forests were lost at a rate of 0.7 million hectares per year in the 1990s but the trend reversed and forests recorded a growth rate of 1.4 million hectares per year over the period 2000–2010, the report said.

"This was primarily due to large scale afforestation efforts in China, where the forest area increased by 2 million hectares per year in the 1990s and by an average of 3 million hectares per year since 2000," it said, adding that Bhutan, India, the Philippines and Vietnam also increased forest area in the past ten years.

The report also highlighted China and India's targets for large scale forest planting in the next few years.

India's target is to cover 33% of its land area with forests and tree cover by 2012. However, 25% per cent of the country land area was covered by forests and trees in 2010, according to the Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) 2010.

"To this should be added an unknown area of line plantings and other 'trees outside forests'," the report stated.

According to the report, China plans a 50 million hectare increase in the area of its planted forests by 2020, with the aim of covering 23% per cent of the total land area with forests, a target which may be reached by 2015 if current planting rates continue.

However, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Timor Leste (Official name of East Timor) and Bangladesh have not seen improvements in their forest cover in the past decade, Rojas Briales said. Forests cover was slightly less than one third of the total land area of Asia and Pacific.

The region's forested area was 740 million hectares in 2010, accounting for about 18% of the global forest area, according to FRA.

UN, which has declared 2011 as the 'International Year of Forests,' found that net global deforestation has declined by 37% but there still exists a billion hectare of degraded forest land. "Forests are vital to our well being," said UN Secretary General Ban Ki moon on Wednesday.

"They harbour 80% of land based biodiversity, and store more than 1 trillion tons of carbon... Greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation account for more than those by the world's entire transportation sector," he added.

Indian Premier to inaugurate 'Delhi Sustainable Development Summit'

By Deepak Arora

NEW DELHI, Feb 1: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will inaugurate the 'Delhi Sustainable Development Summit' (DSDS), being organised by The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI), from Thursday.

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai , President of the Dominican Republic Leonel Fernandez Reyna, and President of Seychelles James Alix Michel will attend the conference, according to TERI officials.

'Tapping Local Initiatives and Tackling Global Inertia' will be the theme of the conference, they said.

Decision-makers from governments, corporate, NGOs, multi/bilateral organisations, academia and research institutions will be attending the 11th edition of the three-day summit that begins from February 3.

Nobel Laureates Prof Joseph Stiglitz (Professor, Columbia University, USA), Dr Yuan-Tseh Lee (President, Academia Sinica, Taiwan) and Prof Sir James A Mirrlees (Professor of Political Economy, University of Cambridge) will also address the conference.

"It will enable creating a uniform level of understanding among all stakeholders; provide an opportunity for constructive dialogue on climate change to arrive at an agreement to formulate meaningful policy options," according to a TERI statement.

Organisers said DSDS 2011 will serve as a platform to appreciate, debate and identify key lessons from examples of local successes needed to move the world in the right direction.

The DSDS is the first major global meeting after the Cancun climate summit in December 2010.

Small island-states which are facing the biggest challenge from global warming will be at the focus of DSDS. The most vulnerable nations include the small island states of the Pacific, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, which are threatened by rising seas, stronger hurricanes and fresh water shortages.

The Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) - a bloc of 43 countries - created a stir at the Cancun talks last year by demanding a legally binding treaty to check carbon emission.

DSDS 2011 will focus on the formulation and delineation of strategies to move the sustainable development agenda forward.

Some of the major themes that will be debated include policy challenges for sustainable growth, creating a sustainable energy future, integrating civil society in the development process, vulnerability and resilience in the context of climate change and business practices accelerating local progress.

'DSDS 2011 will serve as a platform to appreciate debate and identify key learning from local successes needed to move the world as a whole in the right direction. It will enable creating a uniform level of understanding among all stakeholders and provide an opportunity for constructive dialogue on climate change to arrive at an agreement to formulate meaningful policy options,' he said.

The DSDS series has enjoyed global support from over 60 countries, attracting participation from heads of government and ministers, and a host of other dignitaries comprising Nobel laureates, development practitioners, scientists, academics, and corporate leaders.

Finland Minister to attend Delhi Sustainable Development Summit

By Deepak Arora

NEW DELHI, Feb 2: Finland's Environment Minister, Ms Paula Lehtomaki, arrives here on Thursday on a three-day visit. She will attend the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS) 2011 organised by TERI.

On February 4, Minister Lehtomaki will take the floor at DSDS and speak about the significance of international cooperation and preparations for the next United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio-20) in 2012.

During here stay here, Minister Lehtomaki is scheduled to meet with several Cabinet Ministers incoluding Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh, Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath, New and Renewable Energy Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah and Water Resources Minister Salman Khurshid.

On Thursday, she would address a press meet, which has been organised by Cleantech Finland.

India and World Bank agree to advance green growth agenda

NEW DELHI, Jan 13: India and the World Bank on Thursday agreed to further strengthen their partnership to advance India's green-growth agenda.

During their meeting, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and World Bank President Robert B Zoellick discussed the Government's vision for a strong and sustainable development agenda.

"The partnership between the World Bank and the Government of India will support programs that help India maintain high growth as a primary objective, while also either building climate resilience or promoting clean energy solutions, consistent with India's 11th Five Year Plan," said a World Bank release in New Delhi.

This includes projects that build fuel-efficient transport infrastructure, clean energy hydropower plants, efficient water supply and wastewater systems, as well as programmes that help farmers, fishing communities and people in other vulnerable communities safeguard their livelihoods against the vagaries of a changing climate, it said.

The government is clear about the need to reflect and factor in ecological concerns into the growth process so that its benefits can be achieved without critically straining the environment, Ramesh said after his meeting with the World Bank chief.

"Our projects supported by the World Bank specifically address our most compelling environmental concerns, including river cleaning and conserving our biodiversity. We are also working at strengthening our environmental regulators as a probable area of future engagement," he said.

The Government is focusing efforts on applying rigorous environmental safeguards for infrastructure projects, strengthening the environmental governance system, revitalizing regulatory institutions, investing in air and water quality improvements and addressing the challenge of climate change on an ongoing basis, he said.

Applauding the Government's efforts, Zoellick said, India is working to integrate its growth objectives and need to overcome poverty with the sustainability of natural resources and the well-being of future generations.

The proposed project to strengthen the capacity of the Pollution Control Boards will help build their skills and infrastructure, ensure their financial sustainability and set up new monitoring and data management mechanisms, the World Bank statement said.

The proposed biodiversity project will seek to demonstrate conservation measures in various ecosystems, catalogue Indias rich biodiversity in hotspots, and support livelihoods of communities living within biodiversity-rich areas and enable them to benefit from investments in these areas, it said.

As India accelerates its response to the environment challenges that face its growing economy, the World Bank too has stepped up its financial support for the government's various environment management and protection programmes.

The Bank has already given its financial support for three environment management and protection projects which include Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project, Industrial Pollution Management Project and the National Ganga Project with $220 million, $65 million and $20 million help respectively.

No review of Jaitapur plant clearance: Jairam

NEW DELHI, Dec 29: Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday ruled out review of the conditional environmental clearance given to the Jaitapur nuclear power plant in Maharashtra, and urged ‘interest groups' not to use environment as an issue to target the government.

“As far as environment clearance is concerned, we have done all that is required and all different interest groups should not use environment as a shield behind which they start firing their guns at the government,” Mr. Ramesh told journalists when asked whether the Ministry would re-think on the clearance given to the power plant in view of the agitation by some groups.

Stating that many people have different agenda in Jaitapur, the Minister asked those opposing the clearance not to ‘make a mockery' of the process. “The clearance for the project was accorded on November 28. The 35 conditions associated with the clearance have been put in the public domain,” he added.

“There are political parties which have never agreed with the fact that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh concluded the most successful civil nuclear agreement, of which Jaitapur is the first project,” he said. Acknowledging that there are some problems in land acquisition, he said these would be looked into by Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan more sensitively and that the communities had to be taken along.

His comments came in the backdrop of senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha and CPI(M) general-secretary Prakash Karat demanding a re-look into the conditional clearance.

IFFCO Awarded for its Energy Conservation Drive

By Deepak Arora

NEW DELHI, Dec 14: Union Minister of Power Sushil Kumar Shinde presented the two top National Energy Conservation Awards 2010 on the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative (IFFCO) Ltd for its efforts in conservation of energy in its fertilizer manufacturing plants.

IFFCO’s Ammonia-Urea Phulpur Unit bagged the first prize in the fertilizer sector and IFFCO’s Complex fertilizer manufacturing Unit at Paradeep was adjudged by a Certificate of Merit for conservation of energy.

The awards have been constituted by Indian Power Ministry.

Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde presented the awards to the Unit heads of the IFFCO’s Phulpur Unit, Allahbad and IFFCO’s Paradeep Unit for its commendable efforts in adopting clean and efficient technologies for conserving the energy.

The award was received by Surjit Singh, ED, IFFCO Phulpur Unit and M.R.Patel, ED, IFFCO Paradeep Unit on the occasion of National Energy Conservation Day on December 14 at a function here.

Expressing happiness over the developments, Dr.U.S.Awasthi, Managing Director, IFFCO said that IFFCO has always kept energy conservation as its first priority and has taken various steps to save the energy at every level at its production units.

Earlier IFFCO Phulpur Unit has also bagged the National award for Prevention of Pollution for the year 2008-09. IFFCO has already reduced the emission of harmful gases through implementation of various schemes.

Dr Awasthi added “We have also taken up various green initiatives and created a division ‘Alternate & Renewable Energy and Natural Resources Management’. This division will focus on construction of Green Building, Solar Panel for Street Lighting, Water Harvesting etc.”

He also said that this is the step towards saving our planet and Mother Nature and IFFCO will continue to serve the country in this manner.

IFFCO Phulpur Unit is engaged in the manufacturing of Nitrogenous fertilizer i.e Urea by using natural gas instead of naphtha. The state of art unit has in-built pollution Control System, Ambient Air Monitoring System, Protective and safety system with interlocks, central effluent treatment plant. The Unit has also set up a carbon Dioxide recovery unit (CDR Unit) to recover carbon dioxide from the primary reformer flue gases.

Earlier, this year IFFCO also fetched US$ 869,256 from Spain towards sale of its Carbon Credits.

Whereas, IFFCO’s Paradeep Unit is the world’s largest grassroots Di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) plant, can produce 2 million tonnes of the fertiliser a year. In terms of nutrients, the production capacity amounts to 0.8 million tonnes of ‘P2O5’ and 0.325 million tonnes of ‘N’ per annum.

IFFCO is committed to the farmers of India will and keep on surpassing its previous records and emerge as the global leader in both the production as well as marketing of fertilizers.