Amended Environment Act 2021: Paragon Policies Formulated, Fewer Beneficiaries are Satisfied

Sangeeta Sambhi, Keekli Intern

“The earth is what we all have in common.” ~ Wendell Berry

Environmental economics is an area of economics that studies the financial impact of environmental policies, on the targetted area of ecosystem. A dominant figure in the early advocacy was Allen Kneese who, along with John Krutilla, is widely regarded as one of the fathers of environmental economics. It studies the impact of environmental policies and devices solutions to problems resulting from them. A major subdivision of environmental economics is its externalities, i.e., the additional cost of doing business which is not paid, either by the business, or, by its consumers.

Another subject of observation under the environmental economics, is placing a value on public goods. For example; clean air is entitled to be at the disposal of everyone’s access, and calculating the cost of losing it as a good, will conclude to formulation of both policy measures to prevent it, or, at least it can be helpful in spreading across a flair of awareness that can be circulated amongst the public. Since some environmental goods are not limited to a single country, environmental economics often requires a transnational approach.

Coming onto natural resource economics, natural resource economics, is a domain of economics that deals with the demand, supply and allocation of Earth’s natural resources. Its primary goal is to manage the application of economics in such a way that the needs and wants of human beings are looked after by equivalent distribution of potential resources. It may include the distribution of land, water, minerals, along with pooling biodiversity, primming with the thought of not deriving the contents of today’s platter needs from future generation’s utilisation.

One major difference between the two genres of economics is that where on one side environmental economics deals in manipulating the quantitative figures of the limited environmental resources, on the same lapse of shareability, natural resource economics deals with the distribution of the same raked resources whose availability is mostly seen at stake in the contemporary times. One of the major issues that environmental economics has to tackle with is the costs and benefits of alternative environmental policies to deal with the misery of air pollution, quality of water, accumulation of toxic substance, solid waste, and massively surging global warming.

While one of the major problems that is served to the platter of natural resource economics is the management of reasons of the amendment in the Environment Act of 1986. It has been recently amended in the year 2021. With effect from 1st of July, it is now known as the Amended Environmental Act of 2021. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), over the decades, has worked for improving the state of natural resources like keeping the air and water, clean, along with protecting the forests from losing its jewels, forest cover. The census indicates that over the years, the quality of air, quantity of water and percentage of forest cover, in actual terms, has only depleted. One of the most recent research projects showcase that India cuts down 3.1 million trees every year, for both domestic and commercial use. Whereas the number of trees that are replanted remain at the low of 2 million only. As far as the quality of air is concerned, India is ranked as the third most populated country with the worst air quality.  Not only this, it would sadden anyone to be acquainted with the fact that 80% of India’s surface water is polluted. Henceforth, to conclude, stringent measures were required to battle against saving resources from being polluted.

The Amended Environment Act now focuses on empowering the central government with the autonomy of formulating relevant policies in regard of reducing the overall pollution. Not only this, but it also encourages the government to give individual attention to all the specific problems, faced by different parts of India. It prohibits the industries from disposing off toxic waste into water sources, it prohibits cutting down trees from areas that are extinct, and also charges fine from people for using vehicles that promote the emission of carbon emissions in the environment.  In the advent of following these activities, it also took urgent action on cancelling the construction permit of those projects, whose existence was increasing the number of pollutants being disposed off in the air.

Even though winsome policies are formulated in regard of improving the status of India’s environmental conditions, but none prove to be sufficient. Therefore, this gives space for the gap that is generated between the haves and have nots. As per analysing the recent research projects based upon similar domain, it was observed that there was lack of transparency from the government’s side, in conveying the complete information to the community residents. In fact, the recent amendments, when analysed the scale of their applicability, showcased that the government enacted those laws as a way of catering to the expanding industrial growth, rather than focussing on environmental preservation policies. Not only this, but the government also claimed of exempting construction projects violating the parameters of clean and green environment, but instead it has given a green signal to pollution emitters, rather than saving the victims.

This further makes human beings ponder on the adverse effects of climate change. In order to be pivoted with the ground reality, it is important to understand that climate change has accelerated, due to which the supply chain disruptors offer rich-world consumers an unaccustomed taste of scarcity and starving.

After being acquainted with the above stated facts, the consciousness of an individual has a lot of questions to find an answer for. What will happen if the resources are depleted permanently? Will the prices of these resources increase in the nearing future? How to preserve both the extinct and abundant resources?

The answer to all these questions is simple, yet complex to comprehend and implement. The damage that has been caused already, is the one whose tangents are irreplaceable. For any nation to function in totality, effective regulatory institutions need to be established, appropriate compliance mechanisms need to be introduced, transparency in formulating laws amongst the formulator and user should be established, and stringent enforcement of such laws need to be given priority, in the form of key needs of the hour.