Unfair balance
The Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Bill 2002 (the Bill) has come 30 years after the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972. Have these three decades been used to integrate the critical lessons learnt from wildlife management across India and the world?
Yes and no. The Bill has several undoubtedly progressive provisions. It increases protection of wildlife habitats from the onslaught of developmental and commercial forces, e.g. by prohibiting new commercial tourism infrastructure, or changes of protected area boundaries without clearance from a national wildlife board. It provides coverage to all kinds of animals (the previous Act missed out fish, invertebrates, and most marine creatures). The Bill also increases the scope for people's participation in conservation, e.g. by setting up sanctuary advisory committees and by creating two new forms of protected areas, conservation reserves and community reserves.
Unfortunately, these gains are clouded by a number of regressive provisions, as also the neglect of measures activists have sought for years. Given that the greatest threat wildlife habitats face is from commercial and developmental processes, the Bill misses the one concrete opportunity to counter these.
The expert committee, set up by the ministry of environment and forests to draft the Bill in the mid-1990s, had recommended that in a five-kilometre (km) belt around all protected areas, 'developmental' or commercial activities be severely restricted. The Bill has dropped this recommendation. Worse, a major lacuna of the original Act conservationists had pointed out remains unplugged: the need to protect threatened species all over the country not only by stopping their hunting, but also by protecting their critical habitats. Most natural or semi-natural habitat of such species (even of the tiger) is outside the protected area network (since this covers only five per cent of India), and huge chunks of this area are being eaten up by mining, expressways, dams, urbanisation, industries and so on. The Bill will do almost nothing to stop this.
It is equally worrisome that the Bill retains an essentially centralised, bureaucratic model of conservation. For several decades, the single biggest problem faced by official conservation initiatives (other than the onslaught of commercial forces) is the growing hostility of local rural communities. Their rights, practices and knowledge sidelined and needs ignored, such populations now consider 'wildlife' and 'protected areas' dirty words. Steps like membership on advisory committees and the largesse of protected area managers in providing forest produce for 'bona fide' needs are welcome, but nowhere near enough.
If there is a single critical lesson learnt from faltering top-down conservation strategies across the world, it is that communities need a long-term stake, through unambiguous rights and responsibilities and an equal decision-making share in management. Dozens of countries have moved towards co-management and community-based management systems with clear benefits and decision-making powers to local people; many countries (South Africa, Australia, Canada, Brazil) have even successfully attempted restitution of lands and resources once taken away from communities by colonial regimes. Both conservation and livelihoods have benefited. The drafters of the Bill would have done well to learn these lessons.
Even the two new categories of protected areas are unlikely to reach anywhere near their potential of landscape level, community-based conservation. Existing national parks or sanctuaries cannot be converted to these new categories, even though there are dozens of protected areas where such conversion would aid conservation. Community reserves cannot be declared on government land at all, which means that the wonderful initiatives at protecting forests and wetlands and coastal stretches in Jardhargaon and Nahin Kalan (Uttaranchal), Mendha Lekha (Maharashtra), Bhaonta-Kolyala (Rajasthan), Morjim (Goa), and thousands of other such community conserved areas -- or for that matter the huge number of sacred groves that today find themselves legally classified as government land -- can never be community reserves. Equally serious, a uniform institutional structure is advocated in the Bill for all areas that could undermine the wonderful diversity of effective institutions, which communities have evolved.
The Bill needs wider discussion to strengthen provisions against destructive forces and commercial wildlife trade, and to modify provisions relating to community participation and livelihood security. Since the Bill is now before Parliament, a joint parliamentary committee could undertake such consultation amongst different sectors.
Ashish Kothari is founder-member, Kalpavriksh, a voluntary group working on environmental education, research and campaigns 12jav.net12jav.net
CETPs: in fashion
![]( "effluent treatment title=")
Read Full Coverage
The pollution commons
#1 Who is the polluter? What is their waste-typology?
This is the first critical and often make-or-break step. Get the property rights regime wrong and it is clear that nothing will work, is the advice of common property managers in rural areas. It is the same for a cetp.
Delhi is the best example of this. "There were lot of problems with the initial survey of industries carried out by neeri," says the dsidc official. This survey was the basis of estimating pollution levels, designing cetps and apportionment of cost between the individual units in the industrial areas.
"Industries did not provide adequate data at the time of survey," says an official from cpcb. He gives the example of Wazirpur industrial area. "Almost all industries in Wazirpur have installed tubewells and use the groundwater but they have not mentioned this in the survey forms just to avoid paying for pollution control," informs the official. Industrialists are alleged to have given wrong details about the size of operation, number of workers and many other things.
Industrialists on their part blame neeri and the government departments for the problems in the initial survey. "In the Okhla industrial area, neeri identified about 2,200 units out of which 235 turned out to be fake," informs Kuldip Khanna, an industrialist and treasurer of Okhla Industrial Area cetp Society. Why would the genuine industries pay the extra money on account of neeri's erroneous survey, he asks? Factory owners say that despite being informed about the discrepancies in the list of industries and the resultant cost apportionment, government departments have constantly refused to correct these anomalies. Sahi Dalip Singh, secretary of the Mayapuri Industrial Area cetp Society gives a bizarre example. "While filling up the form, one particular industry filled up the column asking for area of the industry as 332 square metres (400 sq yards). Amazingly in apportionment this industry was charged for 332,400 sq yards which is an exorbitant amount," says Singh. "And now the authorities want all industries to share the cost of someone else's blunder," rues Singh.
But once the survey has been done, the costs fixed on that basis, reopening the issue is like opening up a can of worms as it would require a new survey, new cost apportionments and altogether new collection of money for the payment of the capital costs of the cetp. But without this, industry refuses to pay. Also, without regular and accurate surveys, new industries are not added to the list of polluters and charged for treatment of effluents. It is a stalemate.
But others, more fortunate without government interference, have found pragmatic solutions. In the case of the Naroda cetp in Gujarat , members of the estate were required to book the amount of effluent they would send to the plant each day. Industries were broadly classified on their waste typology and charges fixed. So, the most polluting dye and dye intermediates paid almost 75 per cent of the total capital cost. But also, to reward the early comers, differential rates were declared for future bookings. Therefore, while the before-construction rate was Rs 5 per litre, the going rate for booking waste treatment is Rs 35 per litre.
#2 Who will pay?
The Pali cetp in the textile and dying town of Rajasthan used the most imaginative methods for cost recovery. Instead of a complicated formula based on water usage or pollution load, they charged Rs 50 for every 100 kg bale of white/grey cloth entering the town for printing or dyeing. For example, if an industrialist buys 2,000 kg of cloth, he or she would pay Rs 1,000 as the factory's effluent treatment charges. Also, the collection method was simple: the Pali municipal council collected it at the octroi checkpoints and handed it over to the cetp management. The state government issued a gazzette notification -- the Pradusan Janya Vayvsaya Kar (pollution cess) under the municipal act (see box: Pollution unabated).
Other private and association-run cetps have taken the route to fix membership fees -- in differential rates for polluting and non-polluting units. Individual cost is apportioned on different basis:
• Volume of input water used and effluent characteristic of the industry;
• Volume and type of effluent -- as well as the date of joining the cetp membership. In Tirupur, for example, flow metres have been installed in each unit to record the quantity of effluent flowing out of that factory. Monthly charges are collected on this basis.
Some cetp managements are also evolving incentives to reduce pollution loads. For instance, in the Vapi cetp, the company gives rebates on treatment costs ranging from 50-95 per cent to units which reduce pollution and move towards cleaner technology (see box: Well monitored). It also changes its tariff structures based on its costs -- and interestingly, if there are savings because of reduced energy consumption, it passes it to the industry.
But there are many complaints as well. In Maharashtra, for instance, most of the industrial associations find a joint venture partner to construct the cetp. The association collects about 10-15 per cent of the investment from the member units and the joint venture partner invests the rest, to be recovered from running operations.
Today most joint venture consultants in Maharashtra are a disillusioned lot. They say that on many occasions the industry fails to cough up their share of the construction costs. Or they refuse to pay the ongoing operation and treatment costs. T Ravishankar, a partner with M/s Suyog Matcon, an environment consultant company, complains that most cetps are in dire straits. His company is constructing a cetp and is already facing problems in collecting the dues from industry as well as trying to raise the fund from financial institutions. S B Patil, executive engineer (environment), Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (midc) accepts that cetps at Ranjangaon (with a capacity to treat 14 mld) and Ambernath (7.5 mld) industrial areas have been completed but are not operating". He says that the effluents generated in these industries are below the minimum quantity of effluents required to run these cetps.
Other explanations provide clarity. "Constructing a cetp is a waste of money," rues Ravishankar. "The owners do not pay up the treatment costs even after we have constructed a cetp. They just liase with the mpcb official to get a zero discharge certificate and show it to the cetp operator or association to avoid paying running costs," he adds. M L Gautam, member secretary, mpcb admits that corruption is rampant in the field level mpcb officials who come in direct contact with the industries. "The same units (which flaunt zero discharge certificate) then dump their effluents at night into the nearest water body or sewage system," explains Ravishankar. He adds that the situation is similar all over the state, where cetps have been constructed but are never actually used. " cetps fail because industries never actually send the effluents to the cetp for treatment and dump it somewhere else," says another private operator of a cetp.
midc is now penalising industries, which are not members of an operational cetp society: water charges are doubled. Where there is no operational cetp society they get six months to find a joint-venture partner and 18 months to commission the plant. Otherwise, water charges are doubled again. But will this pressure tactic work if industries don't pay for treatment subsequently?
#3 Will industries pre-treat the waste before they send it to the CETP? Is the technology adequate to treat effluents?
In Tirupur, the hosiery capital of India, the management of the cetp is not the problem. It is the inability of the cetp to bring down the very high levels of total dissolved solids (tds) in the effluents from the dyeing and bleaching units. This is also the case in the plants for tannery waste in the Tamil Nadu.
Tirupur has eight cetps, which treat about 40 mld of effluents from 233 dyeing and 55 bleaching units. " cetps here work well except for the problem of tds," says K Elankumaran, district environmental engineer, Tamil Nadu state pollution control board (tnpcb). But this high tds level in the 'treated' effluents has severely polluted the river Noyyal. The tnpcb standard for tds is 2,100 mg/l, but the cetps discharge anywhere between 8,000 to 10,000 mg/l tds. "Technologies are available to treat the tds but they are not financially viable," says Paul Appasamy, director, Madras School of Economics, Chennai.
The same is true for the cetps set up for tannery clusters. There are 12 functioning cetps set up for the tannery clusters all over the state but none of them have been able to meet the tds norms. " cetps are able to treat the tannery wastewater and almost all the effluent parameters are met but they are not able to bring the tds levels down to the prescribed standards," says Sheela Rani Chunkath, chairperson, tnpcb. Average tds load for effluent coming out of production of a completely processed hide is about 10,000 parts per million (ppm). "We are pressing the tanneries to bring down this limit to 7,500 ppm through in-plant and process modifications, which is possible. But to get it down from 7,500 ppm to 2100 ppm, they'll have to invest in technologies like reverse osmosis, which may not be financially viable for most units," says S Balakrishnan, joint chief environmental engineer, tnpcb. Notices in this regard have already been issued to the cetps in the state.
Barely a year ago, newspapers reported how villagers living at Chinnapallapatti continued to suffer because of the tannery cetp in Dindigul district. Villagers had voluntarily given up their common tank to allow the cetp to store treated water. But neither promises nor the prescribed emission norms were ever met. Polluted water was discharged, say the villagers. Their land and water has turned to poison. Their repeated complaints to officials met with no response. The Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum, working on tannery pollution in the state, have the same complaint. They say that they inspected the cetps in Vaniyambadi and Ranipet on December 2002 and found that the effluents discharged after the so-called treatment was clearly not meeting the prescribed standards. The surrounding villagers were very badly affected by the discharge and sludge.
In most other cases, it is the waste-typology which is the problem. cetps are designed in most cases to receive pre-treated waste. Individual industries have to treat their waste to meet certain specified norms before they send to the cetp. This is critical and provides the basis of the design of the plant.
But more often than not, individual factories do not undertake any treatment. They default. The waste received by the cetp is much more than it can handle and the system starts falling apart. This is the most common problem in plants. It is not about individuals, but about managing waste of a collective of unwilling individuals.
#4 What will happen to the technology if the waste profile of the user changes?
Pali is a classic case of where technology of a cetp failed to keep pace with the changes in the production processes of the industrial estates. In this case over Rs 10 crore was spent, and three cetps built to treat roughly 30 million litres of waste per day. But today the situation is as bad as ever. The plants are "white elephants", rue the inhabitants of this pollution haven. The problem began in the early 1990s. When the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (neeri), Nagpur, surveyed the industries it characterised the effluents as alkaline (almost all the industries processed pure cotton cloth). At that time the industries were using as much as 5-10 tonnes of sulphuric acid to neutralise the effluents. neeri had then suggested that if 20 per cent of the units would shift to processing synthetic cloth, which involves use of sulphuric acid in the process, the combined effluent would become neutral and the problem of buying acid could be solved.
Then in 1996 when surveys were conducted, the new cetps were again designed to handle alkaline effluents. Provision to handle acidic effluent was not considered. But economics of the market determines pollution, not the equipments technologies. As demand for pure cotton reduced, millers switched to synthetics. The effluents turned to acidic from being alkaline. The treatment plants collapsed. Local industry and government say neeri blundered. The blame game continued (see box: Pollution unabated).
But clearly this is an important issue. The design of the plant has to estimate the type and volume of current waste, as well as future waste generation. Even if it cannot always provide for changes in production processes and technology, there must be some check on the future entrants in the cetp class. Their waste profile has to be compatible with the technology of the plant. This cannot be done without methods of classification and segregating industrial estates on the basis of their waste.
But heavy metals and organochlorines are not even in the ambit of most cetp plants. In most cases, cetps are not designed to treat heavy metals in the effluents. In tannery waste, chromium is a huge cause for concern. The option is to set up separate chrome recovery units or change the process technology. Little is often done.
Also, there is little provision to ensure that the sludge from the cetp is disposed off in secured landfill sites. There will be additional costs to do this. As yet, only a few cetp managements are charging their members for the disposal of the sludge. At all the other places it is just dumped at the nearest available place. As a result, concentrated dumps are probably leaching into the ground. An unmitigated disaster.
#5 Who is responsible for cleaning up? Who will manage the CETP?
Has the cetp then become a convenient way to circumvent the law? The polluting industrialists can claim that they have met the provisions of the pollution laws by paying for the cetp management to take in their waste and to treat it. But if the cetp does not effectively treat the waste, who can be held liable for action: the management of the cetp or the individual industry? And how does the pollution control board enforce the law?
Environmental activists in Patancheru raised this issue. They claimed that under the water act and the environment protection act (ep), "no person carrying on any industry, operation or process shall discharge any environmental pollutants in excess of prescribed standards". And even though the water act provides that the processors of waste are equally responsible, the multiplicity of agencies diffuses the onus of responsibility. In this case, the group of industries -- 128 members -- located in this heavily polluted pharmaceutical and chemical estate near Hyderabad, with active support from the state government owned infrastructure corporation, promoted a public limited company called the Patancheru Enviro-Tech Limited (petl) in 1989. By doing this, industrialists entrusted the management to the state-owned company to escape the penal provisions of the ep act, says activists.
The three most popular management arrangements are:
• A cooperative or registered association of the industries in the estate. It could be registered under the companies act or the societies act. For instance, the Common Effluent Treatment Plant (Thane-Belapur) Association is a registered company and its members include a nominee of the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation. But in Pali, the cetp is managed by a registered trust -- the Pali Water Pollution Control, Treatment and Research Foundation Trust. The district collector of Pali is the chairperson of the trust, making it defacto government ownership.
• A private or public limited company set up with the aim to manage the common effluent plant. For instance, the Vapi Industries Association has promoted the Vapi Waste and Effluent Management Company limited (vwemcl). Similarly, in Naroda, the industry association has set up the Naroda Enviro Projects Ltd (nepl) as a separate company.
• A public sector enterprise like the state industrial development association operates the plants. For instance, in Delhi the cetps have been built by dsidc. The cost of the plant is partly charged to the industries by this government agency. In addition, a plant level committee has been constituted by the Delhi government, under the chairmanship of the concerned deputy commissioner or the joint director industries of the area.
But in all these arrangements, what is the legal provision for holding the management liable for the pollution caused by the cetp? In addition, how does the management of the cetp hold the individual companies responsible for pollution? What powers do these cetp associations have to penalise their members? There seems to be little clarity on this matter as yet.
Only Delhi has passed a specific act for the management of the cetps -- the Delhi Common Effluent Treatment Plants Act 2000 -- under which the cetp management has to be entrusted to a society of the users in the industrial estate. But then to complicate things, the act also provides for the creation of an 'appropriate authority', which it says will be responsible for deciding the cost apportionment and also recover the unpaid dues from the occupiers. This authority is also in charge of imposing a penalty on the defaulters.
Clearly a case made for hell. The confusion between the role of the society and the appropriate authority has meant that nobody takes responsibility for the efficient working of the plant. Local industrialists complain that when they identify the defaulters and send it to the authority -- the dsidc or the plant level committee -- they get no response. The government complains that the industries only want to be let off the hook and not take responsibility. Buck-passing continues.
The rest of the arrangements are informal and ad hoc. In the Thane-Belapur cetp, the members sign a tripartite agreement with the state industrial development corporation and the association on the issue of liability and responsibility. Similarly in Vapi and Naroda, rules and regulations laid down by the company include provisions for penalising the defaulters. The company monitors samples from individual units, those defaulting on the emission norms are charged fines. In Naroda, the fines are collected by the company and used for the charitable hospital being set up by the association in the area.
The powers in most cases are based on contractual arrangements or under the companies act. The Vapi company management says it takes the assistance of the state pollution control board to disconnect the water and electricity supply or to permanently close down the factory of a chronic defaulter. According to its managing director, Manoj Oza, as many as 34 units have been closed down till date.
Is this institutional and legal framework then adequate for running the complicated machinery of cetp?12jav.net12jav.net
Making CETPs work
If cetps are the answer, how do we make them work? The choice of technology, however important, is not the only challenge ahead. The key is to build a much stronger framework for common waste governance.
In Delhi, for instance, a legal framework exists. But it is so convoluted that nobody is clear about specific roles and responsibilities in the management of the waste. For instance, the law gives the cetp users societies responsibility for "setting up and operating a cetp " in their estate. But it does not give them the powers to set the dues or even to recover unpaid dues from the individual users. The society is toothless. It has to appeal to "authority", a government agency like the industrial development corporation or the pollution control board, to take action against defaulters. This will never work.
On the other hand, if the cetp societies are given powers to take punitive action against defaulters and to ensure effective functioning, the monitoring agency has to make sure that these plants do not become ways and means of circumventing pollution laws. It is, therefore, necessary to do the following:
Firstly, set up the institutional framework -- based on the best practice today -- giving responsibilities to the cetp societies to ensure that the plants work effectively. It is their responsibility to bring about cooperation and compliance. But for this, they should also have the right to set the terms and the rules for engagement. Only in the case of extreme punitive action, if at all, a government agency should be involved.
Secondly, we need governance mechanisms that strengthen decentralised decision-making. It needs strong internal governance -- effective executive boards, regular general body meetings. But most of all, it needs transparency in dealings. So, if any action has to be taken, the cetp society must be asked to publish the list of defaulters or publish the list of companies reducing their effluents.
Thirdly, and most importantly, it needs a stronger and much more effective role of the monitoring agencies. As yet, this is pathetic. All the government agencies would like to do is run the plants. This is not their business. Their business is to ensure that these plants are effective, that there is no diversion channel which dumps the waste and that the effluent leaving the cetp, at all times, is within limits. If it is not, it needs clear and concerted action. An action plan for improvements. Strong and determined monitoring to ensure compliance.
For this, we must insist that pollution boards and other government agencies publish their monitoring reports, freely and openly. Perhaps in a website or a local newspaper. Each plant is monitored regularly. The details published. This will give local groups a chance to validate the information. To monitor the monitors.
In fact, ideally the cetps should be rated across the country -- a green rating to establish the innovators, cost-savers and environment-savers. After all this is more about building human societies than about building simple plants. 12jav.net12jav.net
.png)
Comments are moderated and will be published only after the site moderator’s approval. Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name. Selected comments may also be used in the ‘Letters’ section of the Down To Earth print edition.