Environment ministry to amend EIA norms to help businesses

The environment ministry would soon be coming out with an amendment to the Environment Impact Assessment Notification (EIA) with the aim of enhancing the ease of doing business, said environment minister Prakash Javadekar, in a meeting with the 15th Finance Commission (FC).
The NK Singh-led FC called for the meeting with the ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEFCC) for its inputs regarding grants to cities for improving their air quality (AQ), as part of its recommendations to the government on the five year fiscal roadmap for 2021-26.

During the meeting, Javadekar informed the commission that delays in approving project applications and licenses were brought down drastically from 640 days to 108 days and the ministry was working to further reduce it 50 days within the next six months.

On March 12, the MoEFCC published the draft EIA Notification seeking public feedback within 60 days. The notice period was extended till June 30, following representations to withdraw the notification in the light of the Covid-2019 pandemic

In its report for FY21, released in November, the FC had recommended grants of Rs 4,400 crore for the year to improve the ambient air quality in over fifty million cities and urban agglomerations (UAs) while highlighting the severe pollution in the National Capital Region (NCR). The MoEFCC was responsible for its implementation.

On the status of implementation of the FC’s recommendations, the MoEFCC said it was expanding its network of around 984 AQ monitoring stations, 779 manual stations and 205 continuous monitoring stations in around 500 cities.

Singh stressed the need for consistent and reliable AQ data and concerns over pollution in the NCR. According to Javadekar, the new regime of emission norms would lead to an estimated reduction of 30%-40% in vehicular emission.

Further, the Central Pollution Control Board was focusing on the air-shed management approach which involved delineating airsheds based on wind flows and their pollutant reach and integrating city action plans with the larger airshed management strategy. For the government, construction and demolition waste management was a priority, the release said.