Be more serious, panel member tells environment protectionists

Venkatachari Jagannathan
21 October 2002

Chennai: In India debates over environmental pollution largely centre around industrial and automobile pollution (brown issues), while pushing the green issues (water, soil, denudation of forests and others) to the background, says N R Krishnan, a member of the Mashelkar Committee on auto fuels and former secretary, ministry of environment and forests.

Citing a study by Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, he says: What we overlook are the 96-per cent particulate pollution, 82-per cent sulphur dioxide emissions and 39-per cent nitrogen oxide emissions all occur indoors.

Even among the brown issues, the surface water pollution, which accounts for more than 50 per cent of the environmental costs, receives much less attention than, say, automobile pollution. And no voice is raised about the untreated urban sewage let into our rivers.

The annual environmental cost incurred by India in not attending to environmental deterioration is around 4.5 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP). In other words an annual GDP growth of 4.5 per cent is negated by environmental degradation, he says.

Not just that. There is also an opportunity cost suffered by Indian exporters when other countries impose restrictions on environmental grounds. The ban on the import of textiles dyed with benzidine or azo dyes into the European common market and the import of shrimp harvested without using turtle excluding devises into the US are some examples of non-tariff barriers.

In India the approach to protect and improve environment is that of regulatory nature, and this entails a heavy cost to implement. According to Krishnan, for effective environment protection, market-based economic instruments (tax concessions, subsidies, trading of pollution rights), pricing of natural resources (water, woods and land) and active participation of the stakeholders are a must.