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#MOEF,

Javadekar said his ministry will soon come up with a booklet highlighting 50 projects across the country that remained pending for years.

Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar Sunday said that his ministry has brought down the time for environment project clearances to 190 days from the 600 days which was the norm during the UPA regime for 10 years. In two years of the Modi government, Javadekar said, his ministry has given approvals to 2000 projects. Speaking to The Indian Express, Javadekar said, Earlier for 10 years, the Minister was known as the obstructionist minister, blockade ministry and speed-breaker ministry. Now, we have changed the image of the ministry by ensuring that projects do not remained pending for years for want of environment clearances, he said.

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#MOEF, #UNDP

The Centre on Sunday announced that a new policy is in the offing to conserve Western Ghats, which is recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Centre will formulate a policy that will conserve the rich biodiversity of the area, at the same time ensuring that the livelihoods of 5 crore people residing in the region spread across Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu are not adversely affected, Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said.

It is a myth that ecological conservation and development cannot co-exist. It is not correct to see environment and development as being two ends of a spectrum, where one must be compromised in order to enhance the other, he said at the International Biodiversity Day event in Mumbai on Sunday night, organised by the Ministry of Environment and Forest and the National Biodiversity Authority in association with the Maharashtra State Biodiversity Board and the UNDP India.Javadekar said India was one of the recognised mega-diverse countries of the world, harbouring nearly 8% of the recorded species and representing four biodiversity hotspots.

He commended the peoples action for environment conservation and said a janandolan (peoples movement) was necessary for biodiversity conservation. The minister lamented that many success stories of environment conservation were not highlighted by the mainstream media.

Peoples movement
Maharashtra Governor C H Vidyasagar Rao too said that biodiversity conservation should be a peoples movement.
Referring to the unprecedented drought in Marathwada, the Governor said conserving water, maintaining water bodies clean and managing water resources judiciously is critical to sustain the life and livelihood of people and to preserve biodiversity.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/548095/policy-conserve-western-ghatsamp8200centre.html

#MOEF,

Environment ministry is set to frame a stringent law on civil penalties providing for hefty fine and jail term for green norm offenders. This is in sync with its policy of making compliance easy but violations costly.

Giving details of the proposed law, environment minister Prakash Javadekar said besides covering industries and other private entities, it will have provision to impose heavy penalties on government agencies, local bodies and state-run institutions.

Within the next two weeks, inter-ministerial consultations on the draft law will be over following which it will be placed before the Cabinet for approval, he said.
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#CPCB, #Industry, #CEPI

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has revised the criterion to assess Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Index (CEPI) across industrial clusters in the country, an exercise that first began in 2009-10. The pollution watchdog has asked state pollution control boards and pollution control committees to do a fresh assessment of industrial clusters based on the new parameters and identify critically polluted areas and seriously polluted areas.

According to the CPCB officials, state boards, state governments, industrial associations and stakeholders had sought revision of CEPI criterion to omit subjective parameters such as newspaper reports and potential affected populations.

In 2009-10, the CPCB had carried out the first comprehensive environmental assessment in 88 prominent industrial clusters. The assessment showed that 43 industrial clusters were critically polluted areas (CPA), based on a high score on the comprehensive environmental pollution index.

Of the 43, the three states of Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra alone had 17 CPA’s. In 2010, based on the CEPI scores, the union environment ministry under Jairam Ramesh imposed a moratorium on consideration of developmental projects in all 43 CPAs. Though the moratorium was lifted in a phased manner, it is still in force in Ankaleshwar, Vatva, Chandrapur, Vellore (North Arcot), Jodhpur, Pali and Najafgarh drain basin.

Unlike the environment ministry under United Progressive Alliance, the current dispensation prefers giving time to errant industries for complying with pollution norms rather than imposing moratoriums or shutting them down indefinitely.

In the revised CEPI, significant weightage of 50 per cent has been assigned to the quality of ambient environment comprising of air quality, solid waste and wastewater.

State pollution control board’s have to undertake environmental quality monitoring in the critically polluted area through third party laboratories and the monitoring has to be done twice a year in pre-monsoon and post-monsoon season. All the polluting sources identified in the industrial clusters have to be notified and brought in public domain on state pollution control board websites.

Besides this, the scale of industrial activity, health related statistics and compliance status of industries will be accounted for to measure CEPI. Speaking on the revised CEPI criteria, a top CPCB official said, “We have done away with subjective factors to bring in more accuracy. Health statistics have to be collected from five top hospitals around industrial clusters. We have asked state boards to finish the fresh CEPI assessment by the end of this year.”

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-cpcb-unveils-new-norms-to-assess-pollution-index-across-industrial-clusters-2210812