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Flawed EIAs sail through-Kanchi Kohli
-Civil Society Online


Accreditation is the act of granting credit or recognition. It is to be preceded with a process where facts, figures and professional ethics are scrutinized so that the desired certification of competency, authority or credibility is presented. Only the best suited with the requisite track record are to find themselves in the approved list.

In India, the much talked about and well critiqued initiative wherein consultants undertaking the responsibility of carrying out Environment Impact Assessments (EIA) was initiated in 2007 under the auspices of the Quality Council of India (QCI) and the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF). The reason for this was that EIAs which were formally introduced into India's environment regulatory regime in 1994, were being carried out in a shabby, incomplete way and often in a manner where facts were misrepresented. They remain the key analytical, scientific and technical documents based on which regulatory decision making rests.

The very first report of the QCI titled, ‘Scheme for Accreditation of EIA Consultant Organizations,' clearly stated that, "it is crucial that the quality of EIAs being carried out are of a high order so that possible impacts on the environment of such activities can be assessed and mitigative measures could be adopted. However, the present situation is far from satisfactory, since the EIAs being developed, more often than not, do not measure up to the required quality." A statement which sounds more weighty than what the process of accreditation has turned out to be. Not as an aside, but as a matter of context, it is important to note that the QCI is an accreditation body jointly partnered by the Government of India (GoI) and Indian industry represented by the three premier industry associations, Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

In January and February 2012, two articles in Civil Society magazine had attempted to break down this process by first highlighting the range of concerns which researchers, NGOs and activists working on this issue have had ever since this accreditation scheme was announced in 2007 which is when MoEF had through the Right to Information denied any participation in. These concerns questioned the fact that the agency authorizing consultants was entirely backed by industry associations representing the interests of project developers who in turn are the ones funding EIAs. It also reiterated the fundamental argument that the accreditation process does not check the issue whereby consultants are hired not just to carry out EIAs but also ensure that approvals are acquired. With this the EIA consultants prepare the "best" reports based on which an environment clearance can be procured.

The second part of this two-part article was related to the fact that the EIAs carried out by the bodies already accredited are deeply questionable both on content and the fact that many of these are linked to areas where deep social and environmental conflicts are visible in the country today.

The QCI process has completely sanitized itself from the reality that shoddy EIAs which misrepresent local realities and baseline information often get raised during mandatory public hearings or land up in courts as legal challenges. The consultants who did the EIAs for POSCO's steel plant and port in Jagatsinghpur or Vedanta's bauxite mining in Niyamgiri or OPG's 300 MW thermal power plant in Bhadreshwar are far removed from the realities that have followed the flawed presentation of facts in their EIA reports.

More so the QCI process has not bothered to reflect on whether their list of consultants and their EIA reports have any link to the sites of conflict where questioning the regulatory mishaps has been an issue of critical enquiry.

On 5th March this year, the MoEF uploaded on its website another updated list of 150 consultants who are now on the accredited list. The National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) which, amongst many other projects, has been criticised for the flawed information in its EIA for the Koodankulam nuclear plant, finds itself nested in the list from the very beginning. Back in 2007 when groups and individuals had pointed out the lacunae in the QCI process they had brought out a list of EIA consultants with the project where the EIAs were not up to standard and NEERI was there with its list of flawed EIAs. Koodankulam, as we all know, is presently marred with discontent for the last several years and conflict had heightened in 2012. The contents of the EIA have been questioned from the time when the public hearing first took place.

One can list the many other big and small consultants who are today party to the rising social conflicts in India by churning out EIA reports for projects that have a deeply flawed siting. But will that serve any purpose? The deeper question is around the conscious efforts to depoliticize accreditation processes like that of the QCI or even the very act of EIA making. Even as those involved in these processes might think of their task as being one of doing their bit and not being party to the final decision-making on these projects, their ‘tick-marking' of a particular consultant with a marred history cannot be dislocated from the socio-political realities of where their accreditation has a bearing. A faulty consultant will continue to manufacture EIAs for project authorities so that they justify approvals and by this the act of EIA making will become a conduit to whatever decision gets taken around the project. This time the QCI will not question the consultant's ethics but credit it with recognition.