ToxicsWatch, Journal of Earth, Science, Economy and Justice

As of February, 2008, when the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and the Ministries who were testing the waters all along realized that now the opposition by the Delhi based NGOs has been exhausted, they are now promoting the proposed a 16 MW waste to energy plant. The MCD proposes to deliver waste for free and even the New Delhi Municipal Council is joining the bandwagon as well. This mixed waste will undergo a host of mechanical and thermal processes to flush out the combustible elements. The power plant proposes to use about a third of the daily waste of the city. The project cost is estimated at Rs 175 crore. The capital investment per MW of power is almost Rs 11 crore. The coal-powered plant can be set up at about Rs 4 crore per MW. The project is located within the city across 18 acres of land in Okhla and Timarpur. The construction is expected to start by April 2008.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the Timarpur Waste Management Company Pvt. Ltd., have proposed a waste incineration plant to treat the city's solid waste and generate 6 MW of electricity. TWMPCL has applied to a United Nations body for tradable carbon credits.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has proposed to initiate a waste to energy (WTE) project at Timarpur that uses incineration. The Timarpur Waste Management Company Pvt. Ltd. (TWMCPL), a subsidiary of Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. (IL&FS) plans to generate 6 MW of electricity from the project at Timarpur, Delhi. It plans to process and treat 214,500 MT of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) and produce 69,000 MT of Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) in a year as per company's project design document. The project requires an investment of Rs.580 million. The promoters claim that the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance has agreed to provide 20% of the project's cost as a capital grant.

TWMCPL is a subsidiary of IL&FS and has been created only for Timarpur project. A Memorandum of Understanding between MCD and IL&FS was signed in March 2005 by D K Mittal, the CEO of TWMCPL and Rakesh Mehta, IAS the then Commissioner of MCD. Mehta is Principal Secretary and Chairman-cum-Managing Director of Delhi Tansco Limited in Delhi Government. Mittal is also a serving IAS officer, besides being the CEO, Special Infrastructure Projects, Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) and a member, Supreme Court Committee on Waste to Energy despite being an interested party. Mittal was earlier with Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

On 14 March 2005, MCD said that it plans to earn carbon credits from the project. TWMPCL has since applied for approval from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Executive Board to earn carbon credit. The project got listed before the board on 23 May 2006, and the board sought comments until 21 June. TWMCPL had submitted its project design document.

The CDM Executive Board of the UNFCCC supervises the Clean Development Mechanism part of the Kyoto Protocol, and is accountable to the Conference of Parties (COP), the decision making body for the protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol entered into force on 16 February 2005, after which the CDM Executive Board started registering projects. The board is based in Bonn, Germany, at the UNFCCC Secretariat.

The Chair of the CDM Executive Board is Jos� Domingos Miguez. There are two Indian members as well in the Board, out of its 10 members from the parties to the Protocol. The Indian members are Sushma Gera and Rajesh Kumar Sethi. In addition, there are 10 alternate members in the Board.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) allows industrialised countries to meet their emission reduction targets by paying for green house gas emission reduction in developing countries. Say that a company in India switches from coal power to biomass and that the CDM board certifies that by doing this, the company has reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 100,000 tonnes per year. The company will be issued 100,000 Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs). One CER corresponds to reduced green house gas emissions by one tonne of carbon dioxide per year. For example, if a project generates energy using wind power instead of burning coal, and saves 50 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, it can claim 50 CERs.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, the United Kingdom (a developed country) has to reduce its green house gas emissions by 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. Continuing with the example above, if the UK purchases the 100,000 CERs from the Indian company, its target goes down from 1 million tonnes/year to 900,000 tonnes per year, making the goal that much easier to achieve. Developed countries are expected to buy CERs from developing countries under the CDM process to help them achieve their Kyoto targets. CERs are therefore a "certificate", like a stock and help achieve trading of emissions credits.

A significant point to note is that in India, income from CERs are not taxed. MCD and TWMCPL are arguing that since they propose to generate electricity using a non-conventional energy source instead of fossil fuel, the Timarpur project must be deemed a renewable energy project and for which carbon credits be given to them. TWMCPL wants to receive CERs for this project to earn revenue by selling those CERs.

Problems galore

The central problem with the Timarpur proposal is that waste burning technology cannot automatically be deemed a renewable energy project. If anything, MCD and TWMCPL's attempt to classify the WTE plant as a CDM project is far fetched and misleading. Waste incineration is itself a greenhouse gas emitter and cannot qualify as CDM project. Incineration of waste violates Kyoto Protocol because as per the Protocol waste incineration is a green house gas emitter.

For a project to qualify as climate change mitigating project it is necessary that it excludes waste incineration -- including waste pelletisation or RDF, pyrolysis, gasification systems -- technologies. Incineration produces pollutants which are detrimental to health and the environment. Incineration is expensive and does not eliminate or adequately control the toxic emissions from today's chemically complex municipal discards. Even the latest incinerators release toxic metals, dioxins, and acid gases. Far from eliminating the need for a landfill, waste incinerator systems produce toxic ash and other residues. Such projects disperse incinerator ash throughout the environment and subsequently enter our food chain.

Two, the design document deliberately chooses not to mention emission of dioxins and heavy metals and thus does not mention the method to deal with such emissions. Dioxins are the most lethal Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) which are associated with irreparable environmental health consequences.

Three, less known is the fact that a similar incinerator-cum-power generation plant at this very site had failed several years ago and the reasons are worth going into. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) had also conducted an enquiry after the Delhi High Court ruled in April 2001 on the plant's failure. The court had taken issue with the procurement of the incineration plant at a cost of Rs.20 crores from a Danish firm Volund Milijotecknik in the mid-1980s and said that "No order should have been placed for procurement of the plant unless its utilities were completely known."

A Ministry of Environment and Forests 1997 white paper had gone into the orginally failed waste incineration plant at Timarpur, a project initiated in the mid-80s.

The MoEF paper said that the failure supported the fact that thermal treatment of municipal solid waste is not feasible in situations where the waste has a low calorific value.

It added: "A critical analysis of biological treatment as an option was undertaken for processing of municipal solid waste in Delhi and it has been recommended that composting will be a viable option."

In June 2005, Gurudas Kamat (MP, Congress, Mumbai North-east), Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy wrote to the MNES seeking review of its WTE programme, citing similar reasons.

Criticism did not come just from the Delhi High Court. Referring among other things to the orginally failed Timarpur incineration plant, a 'White Paper on Pollution in Delhi with an Action Plan' prepared by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests prepared in 1997, said this: "The experience of the incineration plant at Timarpur, Delhi and the briquette plant at Bombay support the fact that thermal treatment of municipal solid waste is not feasible, in situations where the waste has a low calorific value. A critical analysis of biological treatment as an option was undertaken for processing of municipal solid waste in Delhi and it has been recommended that composting will be a viable option. Considering the large quantities of waste requiring to be processed, a mechanical composting plant will be needed."

Four, besides the Kyoto Protocol, the project violates other agreed upon multilateral conventions. It breaks with the Stockholm Convention on POPs because it calls for improvements in waste management with the aim of the cessation of open and other uncontrolled burning of wastes. It violates Dhaka Declaration on Waste Management adopted by South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in October 2004. As per this declaration, SAARC countries cannot opt for incineration and other unproven technologies.

It is inspite of all this that in March 2005, the MCD signed an agreement with IL&FS to setup a waste incineration plant afresh at Timarpur. This time around, civil society groups protested at the India International Centre, the Delhi Secretariat, and MCD offices. Protest letters were submitted to ministers and officials both at the central and state levels. Around 60 individuals participated.

Caught in a time warp

Unmindful of the fact that waste incinerator technologies are net energy losers when the embodied energy of the materials burned is accounted for, the Union Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources (MNES) continues to promote it without any success. It is providing subsidy to such projects through its policy. It has written to all state governments to follow this policy as part of an excecutive order. MNES has now been renamed as Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.

However, not only the judiciary, but a Parliamentary committee has also expressed its opinion against incineration projects. Referring to two burn projects in Andhra Pradesh as well to problems of incineration in general, Gurudas Kamat (Congress, Mumbai North-east), the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy wrote to the MNES on 14 June 2005 seeking review of its WTE programme. Kamat supported a ban on economic incentives for such projects, writing this: "We therefore direct that land filling of unsegregated wastes, incineration and recovery of energy from municipal waste shall henceforth not receive any Govt. sponsorship, encouragement or aid in any manner, except for completion of any projects that have already invested 30% of their capital cost on site."

It is not that better methods of handling municipal waste in Indian cities are unknown. Researchers of waste suggest that composting and recycling materials is a better alternative because it saves the amount of energy that incinerating these same materials would generate. When properly applied, compost prepared from segregated waste is an excellent organic fertilizer. Burning organic waste litter eliminates this valuable resource. Where volumes are too high for local land application, composting is a more sustainable alternative. Organic fertilizer can be analysed and managed before application; but smokestack emissions are dispersed by the wind.

On one occasion, the President rightly summed up the need for integrated zero waste management. He illustrated this by referring to Gandhi Nagar, a town panchayat of around 2,400 families in Vellore district, Tamil Nadu. Gandhi Nagar generates garbage of over 48 tonnes per year. This garbage is converted into manure and recyclable waste generating over Rs.3 lakh in revenue, and the scheme provides employment to local people. Such measures promote sustainable development as against the current trend of introducing failed polluting technologies, which turn citizens into guinea pigs for experiments.

In a related development in favour of this approach, the Inter-Ministerial Task Force on Integrated Plant Nutrient Management has recommended setting up of 1000 compost plants all over the country and has allocated Rs.800 crore for the same in the year 2005. This report has been submitted in the Supreme Court in the writ (civil) no. 888/1996) case. Notably, this report recommends composting as a measure for waste management instead of energy recovery because Indian soil is carbon deficit. But the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and Urban Development has ignored it.

One the question of CERs, while it remains to be seen what the CDM Executive Board will do, it is very likely it will not accept the TWMCPL proposal, as it is against the letter and spirit of the Kyoto Protocol.

President Bush’s policies on global warming are a disaster

Responding to the Bush Administration’s continued obstruction of international efforts to address global warming, Green activists turned one of the nation’s most iconic symbols into a memorial to Bush’s failed legacy on climate change. It projected on the Washington Monument the message: U.S. Global Warming Plan: Hell and High Water accompanied by an image depicting rising sea levels at the base, a predicted consequence of global warming.

President Bush’s policies on global warming are a disaster and his international meeting on climate change in Hawaii is a rogue process to deflect attention from the administration’s insistence to maintain America’s dependence on dirty and dangerous energy sources while failing to address the growing climate crisis. As the XX has long outlived the President it was built to honour, so too will Bush’s legacy on climate change stand as a memorial to his neglect, obstruction and destruction.

The projection served to call attention to Bush’s global warming policies a day after his State of the Union address and on the eve of Bush’s international meeting of the world’s largest emitters of global warming pollution, called the ‘Major Economies Meeting,’ which took place in Hawaii.

After being roundly rebuked in December in Bali at the UN’s International Conference on Climate Change, the Bush Administration continues to push its alternative Major Economies process that seeks to replace the Kyoto Protocol’s legally binding emissions reduction targets with a completely inadequate voluntary approach. The United States stands completely isolated as the only industrialized country on the planet not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

The Bush administration continues to push a climate-destroying agenda and to obstruct all meaningful efforts to address global warming by the international community. “The Bush Administration is hell-bent on obstructing global progress on climate change and was booed by the world community for its do nothing attitude in Bali. Bush is as opposed to binding emission cuts as ever and his Major Emitters Meeting in Honolulu was nothing but a cynical charade lacking any legitimacy.”

Greens called on the countries that attended the meeting to maintain their commitments to substantive action under the Kyoto Protocol. Participating countries included: Japan, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, China, Canada, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesia, and South Africa, as well as the United Nations, the EU Presidency and the EU Commission.

According to the Project Design Document submitted to the CDM Board, Jaiprakash Associates Ltd. (JAL) is setting up one Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) processing plant near Chandigarh. The facility entails MSW processing to derive Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF), which shall be used in a thermal power plant of JAL group at Bagheri in Himachal Pradesh. MSW for processing would be received from various collection centres in Chandigarh city. JAL has signed an MOU with Municipal Corporation of Chandigarh (MCC) for establishing the MSW processing facility. MCC would be responsible for collection, transportation to the facility and JAL would be undertaking the processing of MSW on Build, Own, Operate and Transfer (BOOT) basis.

It must be noted that RDF technology has been tried in Delhi and it was found that it is not suitable for Indian waste.

Chandigarh currently disposes the collected MSW directly at designated dump site at Dadu Majra, Chandigarh without any processing. The estimated quantity of MSW currently available for processing in the RDF plant is 350 TPD and is expected to reach up to 500 TPD in coming years. The proposed processing plant has the capacity to treat 500 TPD of MSW.

There is a case pending in the Punjab and Haryana High Court against such burnn technologies.

MSW processed in the proposed facility would be converted into RDF fluff/ pellets. RDF fluff/ pellets and sent to the captive power plant of the project proponent for its controlled burning in the boiler. The boiler at the power plant is a multi-fuel traveling grate boiler. RDF would be transported to the boiler site in covered trucks. RDF storage facility is at power plant & RDF processing sites. The inerts from the RDF plant will be dumped in the designated site close to the RDF plant. The ash from the boiler will be used in its cement plant at Bagheri as additive. The estimated cost of RDF plant is ~Rs.240 million. The technology for the RDF plant is from Andhra Pradesh Technology Development & Promotion Centre, APTDC.

It is the same technology that has failed in Andhra Pradesh and caused a public health disaster.

It is claimed that the project activity would result into GHG emission reduction by avoiding methane emission otherwise released due to anaerobic decomposition of MSW in uncontrolled landfill site, which is the current practice of disposal for MSW in the city. Such claims are contrary to what is stated in the Kyoto Protocol because waste incineration which is proposed is a green house gas emitter.

Overheard at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS), someone wondered saying as to why has media all of a sudden started accusing Padma Vibhushan R K Pachauri of being an environmentalist in recent months.

DSDS has been projected as the next step flowing from 13th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was held in Bali in December 2007.

DSDS is like Union Environment Minister Manmohan Singh performing the ritual of informing the parliament that pollution of the country's river system is a matter of serious concern and saying, I will be the last person to be happy with the status of the implementation of the Ganga Action Plan.

This summit is like Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit’s customary appearance at the bank of river Yamuna for a photo opportunity that is meant to convey that Yamuna cleaning is underway.


Text of PM's speech at DSDS (7 - 9 February 2008)


Following is the text of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speech at the opening of the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit () on 7/2/2008:

I am delighted to welcome all the Heads of Government and distinguished representatives of various countries who are all here today. Delhi is unusually cold, for the time of the year, but I do hope the warmth of our hospitality will make your visit a very comfortable and memorable one.

I compliment my friend Dr Pachauri for the tenacity with which he has been organizing this very important annual summit on sustainable development for several years now. This Delhi Summit has become an important event in the annual calendar for all those who are committed to finding a globally acceptable and socially inclusive solution to the problems of climate change and outlining pathways to sustainable development.

I believe that the good work of institutions like TERI, groups like yours and individuals like Dr Pachauri have created the necessary 'climate for change' on climate change. Societies all over the world are challenging their governments to do something, to do it now and do it right. I assure you that India would be in the forefront of that effort.

This effort by TERI is a glowing example of that emerging trend of thought leadership that brings together ideas and people from across the world to collectively engage in this new struggle of human imagination over human predicament. The environmental crisis that manifests as climate change makes us realise that we have a common predicament. It is a collective human crisis but, if imaginatively handled, it offers a collective opportunity to reinforce human solidarity in the face of natural forces.

I have often said that the Indian approach to such global problems is defined by the ancient Sanskrit saying, "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam" - the Whole World is One large Family. In his very first address to the nation as India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru said, "Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments". These were the words of Jawaharlal Nehru on the eve of India's Independence on 15th August, 1947.

So we take our responsibility seriously. The Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change is now working on a National Plan of Action for Climate Change. Even as we engage internationally in creating a global strategy to address climate change we would in parallel, work on local, sub national and national action to meet the challenges of climate change. The impact of climate change falls differently on people and the poor are the worst hit. They have the least resources to cope. Action on climate change can then become an action for poverty reduction to reduce the vulnerabilities of the poor people everywhere.

We need technology innovations for reduction of energy use by industry and other user sectors. We need massive action for afforestation, drought proofing and flood protection. We need to act to protect our coastal areas. We need action to protect the glaciers that feed our river systems. A whole gamut of development action needs to be planned and funded. Our 11th Five Year Plan, which has been launched this year, has articulated strategies in many of these areas for our nation.

Our National Plan of Action on Climate Change will be released in June later this year. An area that needs immediate attention is that of public transport. We have asked the Planning Commission to come up with a comprehensive policy in this regard.

We need to create knowledge partnerships across countries to collaborate on climate change action. India has decided to link all academic institutions that work on climate change on a national knowledge net and also identify key knowledge institutions that become centres of excellence in climate change related research. We are also considering setting up a Venture Capital Fund to promote green technologies.

At the international level we will continue to engage with all nations to strengthen global initiatives in the area of climate change. At the last G-8 Summit at Heiligendamm I made a commitment on behalf of India on carbon emissions. India is prepared to commit that our per capita carbon emissions will never exceed the average per capita emissions of developed industrial countries. Moreover, as developed countries take measures to bring down their per capita carbon emissions, our threshold would come down too. This is our solemn commitment.

I am sure participants at this Summit will endorse India's stand because you are all concerned about poverty eradication and reducing global disparities in income and wealth. We cannot continue with a global development model in which some countries continue to maintain high carbon emissions, while the development options available for developing countries get constrained.

We therefore need to ensure an acceptable standard of living for all our people but would choose a sustainable path for that development. Climate justice must, therefore, inform all efforts at international collaboration in act of human solidarity. This then becomes an opportunity for a new global compact. Such a compact has to be based on the well-established principle of common but differentiated responsibility so ably articulated in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This was reiterated at the recent conference in Bali.

By "climate justice" we mean a fair, equitable and transparent global regime for technology transfers. It is in the interests of people living in developed and developing countries to facilitate such transfers. We in the developing world desperately need access to environment friendly technologies, especially in energy, transportation, manufacturing and agriculture. Such technology transfer provides new opportunities for resource transfers to countries for adaptation. Nations of the world will have to engage in the next two years to create a consensus on a new architecture for cooperation that involves both finance and technology support to countries for adaptation.

When we felicitated Dr. R.K. Pachauri on the Nobel Prize to the Climate Change Panel, I had said that I would like TERI to present before the people of our country a global vision on energy security. What is it that we must do and must not do to address the challenge of energy security. What are the technology choices available and what public policy choices do we have that will enable Governments to address the challenges we face in making clean and affordable energy available to all our people. Can we afford persisting with the distortions that have long crept in to our energy pricing policies? Are we contributing to environmental degradation through some of our energy pricing policies? Are we encouraging over use of resources through misdirected subsidies? What are the long-term costs of the short-term benefits we seek from such policies? Are we hurting our future energy security by shirking the responsibility to grapple with the political challenges at hand? We need a much wider national debate on such isues.

I sincerely hope that Summits like these will encourage such a public debate. I would like to see larger participation in these events of our young people, especially from our political parties. I would like our young people to be more vocal on these issues. After all, tomorrow is theirs. If the youth of today do not worry about tomorrow, who will then? I assure you that we in Government of India are seized of the matter and India will adopt a responsible and forward-looking stance, aimed at promoting sustainable development. I look forward to being appraised of the conclusions of your Summit. I wish your deliberations all success.

2/07/2008

DSDS Speakers

Heads of State/Government (current)
Dr Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister, Government of India
HE Mr Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, President, Government of Maldives
HE Mr Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, President of Iceland
HE Mr Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Prime Minister, Government of Denmark
HE Mr Jens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister, Government of Norway
HE Mr Matti Vanhenen, Prime Minister, Government of Finland

Heads of State/Government (Former)
Dr Massoumeh Ebtekar, Former Vice President of Iran, Government of Iran
HE Mr Moritz Leuenberger, Former President of Switzerland, Federal Councillor, Head of the Swiss Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications
HE Prof. Ruud F M Lubbers, Former Prime Minister, The Netherlands

Ministers (current)
HE Mr Anil Kumar Bachoo, Minister for Environment and National Development Unit, Government of Mauritius
HE Ms Aïcha Mint Sidi Bouna, Ministre Déléguée auprès du Premier Ministre chargée de l'Environnement, Government of Mauritanie
HE Mr Sayed Wajid Hussain Bukhari, Minister of Environment, Local Government and Rural Development, Government of Pakistan
HE Mr Andreas Carlgren, Minister for the Environment, Government of Sweden
HE Dasho Paljor J Dorji, Advisor - National Environment Commission, Government of Bhutan
HE Ms Connie Hedegaard, Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Government of Denmark
HE Mr Praful Patel, Minister
HE Ms Khempheng Pholsena, Minister In-charge of Water Resources, Government of Lao and President, Lao National Mekong Committee
HE Ms Maria Cristina Narbona Ruiz, Minister of Environment, Government of Spain
HE Mr Kimmo Tiilikainen, Minister of the Environment, Government of Finland

Ministers (Former)
Mr Børge Brende, Former Minister for Trade & Industry, Government of Norway
Mr Caio Koch-Weser, Vice Chairman and Former Minister, Deutsche Bank
HE Mr Brice Lalonde, Former Minister of Environment and Ambassador for Climate Change, France
Prof. Klaus Toepfer, Hon. Prof., Tsinghua University, Former Executive Director, UN Environment Program (UNEP)

Nobel Laureates
Prof. F. Sherwood, Donald Bren Research Professor of Chemistry and Earth System Science, University of California
Dr Carlo Rubbia, CERN

Government (others)
Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Hon'ble Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, Government of India
Mr Howard Bamsey, Co-Facilitator on Future Action & Deputy Secretary, Department of the Environment and Water Resources, Australia
Dr Sanjaya Baru, Media Adviser, Prime Minister's Office
Mr Reinhard Butikofer, Co Party Leader, Die Grunen
Dr Corrado Clini, Director General, Italian Ministry of Environment
Ms Sheila Dikshit, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Delhi, Government of NCT of Delhi
Ambassador Walter Fust, Director General of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation - SDC, (Swiss) Federal Department of Foreign Affairs
Ms Meena Gupta, Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests
Dr Mary Chinery-Hesse, Chief Advisor to the President, Government of Ghana
Mr Suresh Prabhu, Hon'ble Member of Parliament - Lok Sabha, Government of India
Ms Tiahoga Ruge, Coordinator General - Education and Training Centre for Sustainable Development, Ministry of Environment SEMARNAT
HE Sir Richard Stagg, British High Commissioner
Mr V Subramanian, Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy

Multi-bilaterals
Mr Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
Mr Jean-Michel Debrat, Deputy Director General, Agence Française de Développement (AFD)
Mr Nitin Desai, Former Under Secretary General, United Nations
Ms Julia Marton-Lefevre, Director-General, The World Conservation Union (IUCN)
Mr Praful Patel, Regional Vice President, South Asia Region, The World Bank
Dr Dmitri Piskounov, Managing Director - Programme Development and Technical Cooperation Division, United Nations Industrial Development Organization
Ms Cornelia Richter, Director General, Planning and Development Department, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH
Dr Judith Rodin, President, Rockefeller Foundation
Mr Xianbin Yao, Acting Director General, Regional Sustainable Development Department, Asian Development Bank

Corporates
Ms Lorraine Bolsinger, Corporate Vice President, GE
Mr Jean-Paul Bouttes, Director, Electricite de France (EDF)
Dr Gary Dirks, Group Vice President and President Asia Pacific Region, BP Group
Dr Pierre Gadonneix, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Electricite de France (EDF)
Mr Geirr Haarr, Statoil Hydro, Norway
Ms Naina Lal Kidwai, Group General Manager and Country Head, HSBC India
Mr John M Mandyck, Vice President - Government & International Relations, Carrier Corporation
Dr Ajay Mathur, Director General, Bureau of Energy Efficieny
Dr Nandan M Nilekani, Co-Chairman, Infosys Technologies
Mr Björn Stigson, President, World Business Council for Sustainable Development
Mr Michael Walsh, Executing Vice President, Chicago Climate Exchange
Dr Hiroyuki Watanabe, Senior Technical Executive, Toyota Motor Corporation

Institutions
Dr Azra Churchman, Full Professor, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology
Prof. Hironori Hamanaka, Chair of the Board of Directors, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies
Dr Kristin Ingolfsdottir, Rector/President, University of Iceland
Dr Maritta Koch-Weser, CEO, The Global Exchange for Social Investment
Prof. Dr Dirk Messner, Director, Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik/German Development Institute
Prof. Akio Morishima, Former Chair of the Board of Directors, The Institute for Global Environmental Strategies
Dr Pal Prestrud, Director, Center for International Climate and Environmental Research-Oslo
Dr Arcot Ramachandran, Chairman, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)
Prof. Jeffrey D Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute, Speical Advisor to the Secretary-General, United Nations
Prof. Roland Stulz, Executive Director, Novatlantis - Sustainability at the ETH-domain
Prof. Kazuhiko Takeuchi, Director for International Relations, The University of Tokyo

Media
Mr Raj Chengappa, Managing Editor, India Today
Ms Bahar Dutt, Environment Editor, CNN-IBN
Mr Nik Gowing, Main Presenter, BBC World TV
Mr Rajiv Mehrotra, Managing Trustee, Public Service Broadcasting Trust
Mr Pankaj Pachauri, Senior Editor, NDTV
Dr Prannoy Roy, President, NDTV
Mr M K Venu, Chief Editor, News Economic Times

Environment Ministry, a major threat to India’s environment

New Delhi: The Goa Foundation addressed a press conference today in order to convey its demands that the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, stop granting further environment clearances for iron ore mines in Goa. The issue of these clearances has become a major environmental scandal that needs to be thoroughly probed. The Foundation is also demanding review of the 70-odd environment clearances granted by the Ministry.

The Foundation had petitioned the Supreme Court in 2004 that 70 odd mines in Goa (in addition to several industries all over the country) were being operated without environment clearances required under the provisions of the Environment Protection Act, 1986.

After the Supreme Court passed an order closing down these mines, the lease-holders approached the Ministry of Environment and Forests for environment clearances. Instead of using the opportunity to enforce its environment regulations and impose conditions on these mining activities, the Ministry sought instead to support the mining lobby by speeding up the process of these clearances. Practically all the mines were granted environment clearances en masse within a short span of two years. Expert committees appointed to evaluate mining proposals were not permitted to visit any of the mines. Eventually, all the environmental clearances were issued without a single site inspection.

Goa’s iron ore mines have been implicated over the past several decades in large scale destruction of forests in the ecologically sensitive area of the Western Ghats, degradation of agricultural fields, widespread pollution of water bodies and rivers and sedimentation of the large Mandovi and Zuari estuarine eco-systems. Mining activities have been responsible for gross damage to wildlife sanctuaries, disruption of water sheds, generation of dust and noise pollution, destruction of public roads and tremendous increase in the number of recklessly driven overloaded trucks on Goan village roads, turning the lives of people in mining villages into an endless nightmare.

Despite this, not a single mining project was halted or stopped by the Ministry. On the contrary, mines with the worst environment records, those closest to wild life sanctuaries, those with criminal records, were able to successfully procure environment clearances and temporary working permits ahead of others.

Not only were these environment clearances granted without physically inspecting these areas but the records of the public hearings conducted in Goa were not placed before the EIA Committees. Believing that through the public hearings they would be able to convey the sufferings they had endured due to mining activity, large numbers of village folk had turned up at each of the hearings to petition the government against granting environment clearances for several of the problem mines. All their efforts went to nought as their grievances never reached the EIA committee. The EIA committee was instead permitted to hear only the presentations made by the mine owners who gave it false and incorrect information which was not verified by any official from the State of Goa.

The environment scandal of Goa has now been documented in the form of a book called Goa: Sweet Land of Mine, copies of which are being released to the press today. The entire report can be down loaded from the Goa Foundation website at www.goacom.org/goafoundation

The book contains a map giving the location of more than 700 mining leases granted in the state of Goa more than 50 years ago by the former colonial Portuguese regime and that are being unquestioningly accepted by the Indian Government as legitimate approvals. None of these leases was granted by the Portuguese after considering its impact on groundwater, forest, wildlife, village communities, etc. Not only was environment consciousness absent then, the colonial power could scarcely have been expected to display any concern about the welfare of the people of what was then a conquered territory. That the Environment Ministry could, in this day and age, and despite the abysmal environment records of these mines, nevertheless blithely grant them clearances from the environment angle is too shocking for words.

The Goa iron ore environment clearance scandal conclusively proves that this Environment Ministry itself has become a major threat to India’s environment.