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| The largest ship breaking industry in the world- Gujarat's pride ? |
Issue of Climate Change under New leadership in India
On May 20th, Narendra Modi was formally elected as leader of the BJP parliamentary party and on 26thMay, Prime minister designate Modi will be taking oath as Prime Minister of India. He gave a very emotional speech at the Central Hall, where he vowed allegiance to his mother India and her people. He declared wanting people to remain optimistic to move the country forward as one. He delivered a speech full of hope and promised not to let anyone down. Over the past years, as a member of Gujarat based environmental organization, we have been following Modi’s development plans and policies; in particular, we followed his commitment towards environmental protection. Based on our experience with this political figure and the BJP’s manifesto on environment, we would like to provide a short analysis to assess his actions during his mandate as a Chief Minister of Gujarat and link it with what we expect from him, as a Prime Minister, on the environmental issues.
Now that Narendra Modi is the new Indian Prime Minister, the United States has no other choice but to issue a visa for the very controversial politician. It is very likely that Obama will shortly allow the issue of a visa to enable Modi to visit him. But a dark spot remains: Will Modi accept to go visit the President? For nine years, he has been shunned by the United States. Therefore, as a possible political strategy or pride of his, he could decide to ignore them back and chose to use the United Nations Climate Summit taking place in Sept 2014 in New York as a pretext to visit the US President. But the issues at stake at Ban Ki Monn summit are far greater than mere political schemes, the hopes placed in this conference is that it will be a different kind of Climate Summit. It is aimed at catalyzing action by governments, business, finance, industry, and civil society in areas for new commitments and substantial, scalable and replicable contributions to the Summit that will help the world shift toward a low-carbon economy. Modi will have to present the measures he will take in favor of climate change impacts' mitigation. As usual, he will probably announce bombastic measures that will be revolution in climate change measures in India, if not in the world.
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| Offering pristine beaches for the nasty industry |
That is the way Narendra Modi, face of a new developed India, is. He masters the Art of announcing great measures that turn into vain promises and it did not only start with his campaign to become PM.
A few years back, when he was only Chief Minister of Gujarat, proud as a peacock he announced the establishment of Climate Change Department,not only the first in India but the only of its kind in entire Asia. This department was established for implementation of all the environment related matters to achieve the sustainable development in the State and introducing the sound environmental management practices, but as expected it is more like a trophy that he takes out anytime he has the opportunity to rather than real and useful authority. However, to grant himself more credit and make him look as a « green crusader », it would not be surprising if he creates a Ministry of Climate Change! After the Kyoto Protocol, former Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh started the Climate Change Action Plan, under the Prime Minister’s office, listing the 8 missions to protect the environment. As Modi will probably create a new ministry in charge of Climate Change, it would not be surprising that he transfers the Climate Change Action Plan from PM authority to this ministry’s authority. It is undeniable that Modi is a great public speaker. During one of his speech, he even declared that the Goddess Ganga, herself, called him to power in order to clean her. This declaration was acclaimed by many and the possible outcome of this statement could be that he gives the cleaning of this river to the Ministry of Climate Change; this task was given to National Ganga River Basin Authority. All these measure would enable to appear as an innovator.
Another quite surprising initiative of his is the CDM cell created in Gujarat. This cell was created in order to facilitate CDM registration, financing based on certified emissions reduction (CER), verified emissions reduction (VER), carbon trading, carbon assets management and evaluation and selection of appropriate clean technologies. On paper, this idea would be good, if only it was of any use. Indeed, their functioning is close to zero making it useless.
Pushing environmental protection further, he took the initiative to bring experts from The Energy and Research Institute (TERI) Delhi to Gujarat to give training to his Senior Government officers and then they went to Delhi to gain even more experience in the field of sustainable development. But once again, it was a dead end; Gujarat still fails to submit climate change action plan for Gujarat state.
Indeed, we can wonder what kind of sustainable development Narendra Modi supports. The State of Gujarat has a generation power capacity of over 14,000 MW connecting all the rural and urban areas to the power grid. It even claims to have a 2,000 MW of power surplus. Modi keeps promoting state of the art windmills and solar parks that generate even more surplus and yet a census of 2011 shows that 11 lakh households in Gujarat are still without electricity. It is even more astonishing when you know that villages touched by this situation are located on the outskirts of such windmill hubs and solar parks. Of these 11 Lac homes, a significant nine Lac homes are in rural areas, where the government claims to have finished implementing the Jyotigram Yojana (rural electrification programme) through which it has linked all the 18,065 villages of the state to the electricity grid (in just 30 months), providing round-the-clock, three phase electricity.
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| Byproduct of a successful but affluent society |
Gujarat is the 3rd state in numbers of Clean Development Mechanism projects with more than 300 projects and yet it is not as glorious as it may first appear. Indeed, human rights violations and violation of environmental laws have been several times reported regarding some projects and all of them still were registered. The State Government also ignored letters from civil society detailing the human rights abuses or violation of environmental laws by the company and the lack of adequate consultation with indigenous groups. A striking example of what we could call the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) paradox is the solar park in Charanka. This project required 3,000 acres of land which is established on agricultural and grazing land, a pond and two check dams. People in the area are now facing water problems because of this pond and check dams that were closed. Is this the kind of development new leadership will propose to the rest of India?
Ø In 2010, Gujarat was declared by CPCB the most polluted State accounting for 29% of the 6.2 million tons of hazardous waste.
Ø The Central Pollution Control Board in 2012 declared three Gujarat Rivers to be the most polluted in India. For instance, the Sabarmati River is the third most polluted in the country.
Ø Under Modi, Gujarat Government continued to ignore illegal dumping on private and government lands and rivers.
Ø In 2010, Gujarat got the status of being the most polluted state containing the most polluted industrial site of Vapi with environmental pollution index score of 88.09.
Ø Modi openly favors big industries knowing that they participate in the pollution of the State.
In fact, the perfect example of this privileged relationship with industries is the Adani Port and SEZ in Mundra, Gulf of Kutch. Since 2005, the group has leased up to 7,350 hectares of land from the Gujarat Government at a very good rate, between one and 45 US cents per square meter for a 30-year renewable lease. In return for this favor, Adani Group sublet land to other companies, including State companies such as Indian Oil Co. But it does not stop here; it has now been proven by a committee set up by the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) to inspect the project that the Adani Group is responsible for water ingress, pollution due to fly ash, destruction of the mangroves and the loss of fishermen’s livelihood. They complained several times to local authorities, filed cases in High Court but it is only in 2012 that someone started listening to them. That is how powerful these companies are but it is only because state leader let them become that way.
Based on Modi’s previous behavior as a chief minister of Gujrat, it would not be surprising that he uses the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to his own benefit. He might use CSR money to strengthen his political power or he could use the money from CSR to allocate them in areas where it should be Government responsibility.
The irony that lies there is that Modi almost believed himself as the Indian copy of Al Gore by publishing his book : 'A convenient Action : Gujarat's Response to Challenges of Climate Change'. Basically, he explains how environmental protection can be turned into a profitable business. Once more he can brag to be the second politician in the world to pen a book about environment after Al-Gore.
The environmental issue is merely a political game, a business for the man who has now become Prime Minister. All these promises are mirages to make him appear as an innovator, the savior of the environment, a man who will save India, but to what cost?
Mahesh Pandya
Director, ParyavaranMitra
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