Environmental Studies

Module 6. Social issues and the environment

Lesson 28
ISSUES INVOLVED IN ENFORCEMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL LEGISLATION

28.1 Introduction

In India, more than three-quarters its population depends directly for their livelihoods on activities based on natural resources and the remainder of the population relies on these resources indirectly for food, fuel, industrial output and recreation. Their economic well-being is inextricably tied to the productivity of natural resources and quality of environment. Sadly, most of the natural resources including environment in India are in a serious state of degradation. For example, agricultural lands suffer from soil erosion, water-logging, salinity and general loss of fertility, making them less productive, and water for drinking and irrigation is increasingly getting scarce and polluted. Fishery yields are falling, and air quality is deteriorating. Increasing levels of air, water and land pollution pose a serious threat to human health and longevity. Good management of natural resources and environment is essential to attain and sustain economic growth and development. It is not, as is sometimes mistakenly asserted, just a luxury for wealthy countries concerned with aesthetics.

A characteristic feature of environment is the preponderance of common pool resources (CPRs), i.e., the resources which are used in common by identifiable groups of people irrespective of whether they are owned by them or not, and open access resources (OARs), i.e. the resources that are accessible to everyone without any restrictions; they are nobody’s property. Examples of CPRs include village grazing lands, public lands along highways and railways, ponds, rivers, groundwater basins, community inland fisheries and marine fisheries within the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of nations. The OARs include air sheds, solar radiation and high sea marine fisheries beyond the EEZs, space, ozone layer, and biodiversity. All CPRs and OARs suffer from what Hardin (1968) called, "the tragedy of the commons".

The logic of the ‘tragedy’ is purely economic and can be stated as: unregulated access to a CPR or OAR creates a decision-making environment in which incremental private benefits to an in¬dividual from the increased use of the resource markedly exceed the incremental private costs associated with the increased use. Under these circumstances, each rational consumer or user of the resource is motivated to consume or use more and more of the resource till the resource is completely destroyed or degraded as a result of collective and uncoordinated use by all the individuals in the community. Thus, individual rationality leads to collective ir¬rationality. The calculus of incremental or marginal private benefits markedly exceeding the incremental private costs follows from the fact that, in the case of a CPR or OAR, whereas an individual can appropriate all the benefits resulting from his increased use of the resource, he bears only a small fraction of the incremental costs associated with his increased use; the incremental costs are shared by all the members of the community (Singh, 1994 a: 12-14). This means that there exists an externality in the use of the CPR in question as evident from the difference between the incremental private cost and the incremental social cost; the former being less than the latter. Thus, the common pool problem is basically one of the existences of exter¬nality - a divergence between private cost and social cost of exploitation which eventually leads to either depletion or over¬crowding or congestion (Friedman, 1971: 855). The problem is a manifestation of either the absence of exclusive private property rights or the breakdown of the structure of property rights (Randall, 1975: 734).

Hardin’s thesis of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ has since become the dominant paradigm of the exploitation of CPRs and OARs. It has formed the basis of numerous policies seeking to privatize or nationalize natural CPRs in many developed and developing countries of the world. It is now widely agreed that co-users of CPRs and OARs usually fail to cooperate in using the resource optimally under the following three conditions:

1. When the perceived private costs to individuals of co-operat¬ing may exceed the perceived private benefits of cooperating;
2. When individuals feel that their own contribution to the collective goal is minuscule and would not be missed if withheld because others will continue contributing, enabling them easily to free ride on the contributions of others; and
3. When individuals have no assurance or certainty that the other members of the group will make their contributions (or cooperate) and that their lone contribution to the effort would be sufficient to produce the desired outcome.

When an externality is present, the competitive equilibrium use of the resource (CPR and OAR) is socially inefficient .This is illustrated in Figure 28.1 As shown in the figure, the competitive equilibrium level of grazing (X) in a community pasture is attained when the level of grazing is X2 where the private marginal cost is equal to the marginal revenue whereas the socially optimum level of grazing is X1, where the social marginal cost is equal to the marginal revenue. Thus, the open access equilibrium is attained at a higher level of grazing and hence a higher level of exploitation than the socially optimum level of exploitation, i.e., .X2 > X1.

The problem of non-cooperation of users of CPRs and OARs could also be illustrated through the Prisoners’ dilemma (PD) game.

Fig. 28.1 Competitive (open access) equilibrium level and socially optimal level of grazing in a village pasture

Besides the pure economic logic, there are several other socio-economic factors such as population pressure, poverty, unemployment, ignorance, and lack of incentives for using the environment in a socially optimum manner on sustainable basis. So long as the human and animal population was within the carrying capacity of locally available natural resources and local environment, there was no environmental degradation due to human actions. But as the population increased and local economies got integrated with external economies through trade, the process of degradation of natural resources and environment started. Further, the fact that many communities who depend directly on natural resources for their livelihood are very poor, ignorant, and have no alternative employment opportunities means that they are compelled by their circumstances to over-exploit and degrade the natural resources accessible to them. Illicit felling of trees from forests, hunting, encroachment of forest land, and poaching are some of the activities resorted to by the communities, partly driven by their basic needs and partly by greed. This might happen even if it is to the long-term detriment of the communities’ own well being.

Another important economic reason for environmental degradation is the fact that protection and conservation of environment has a high opportunity cost, especially in developing countries like India. For instance, in the case of forests, the opportunity cost is the value that could be derived by clear-cutting the timber and using the forest land for agricultural purpose, or as a site for a hydropower project. Likewise, the opportunity cost of conservation of a marine ecosystem is the value that could be derived from depleting the entire fish stock to extinction. In view of this, local resource users do not have any incentive to protect and conserve the environment.

Another major reason of environmental degradation in India is the fact that began in the mid 1960s, there have been many technological breakthroughs in the agricultural sector, which ushered in Green Revolution. For example, there has been widespread adoption of high yielding varieties of crops of a few of the major food grains crops such as rice and wheat in conjunction with increased use of water, chemical fertilizers and plant protection chemicals. This has led to the increasing uniformity within those species and varieties of crops and hence the loss of biodiversity and increased levels of degradation of land due to excessive irrigation and pollution of water bodies due to leaching of harmful chemicals. Besides, development and wide-spread use of water extracting devices such as drilling machines and power-operated pump sets has led to over-exploitation of groundwater basins and development of mechanized trawlers to over-fishing of marine fisheries and pollution of sea water.

The measures that could be used for mitigating the problems of environmental degradation could broadly be classified into four categories, namely, institutional changes, direct controls, and economic / market-based instruments and technological measures. When identifying alternatives for mitigating the problems of environmental degradation, we should aim at minimizing it, or at least restricting it to a level consistent with society’s objectives, rather than trying to prevent or eliminate it altogether. A simple rule of thumb for choosing a particular measure is that its estimated social benefits must markedly exceed its estimated social costs.
Creation of new institu¬tions, modification of existing institutions, changes in existing systems of property rights, enacting new laws, imposing new taxes, and provision of newly introduced subsidies belong in the category of institutional changes.

28.2 Institutional Instruments

Article 48-A of the Constitution of India provides that the state shall endeavor to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard the forest and wildlife of the country. Article 51-A imposes as one of the fundamental duties on every citizen the duty to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife and to have compassion for living creatures.

The present legislative framework for environment management in India is broadly contained in the umbrella Environment Protection Act 1986, the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, the Water Cess Act 1977 and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981. The laws in respect of management of forests and biodiversity are contained iin the Indian Forest Act 1928, the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980, the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972 and the Bio-diversity Act 2003. There are several other enactments, which complement the provisions of these basic enactments.

Now, India has a large number of environmental acts and regulations. Pollution limits for various industries have been prescribed in the Environmental Protection Rules 1986. Environmental clearance from the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests is mandatory for setting up new industries in many sectors. A list of major environmental acts and rules now in force in India can be found in the website: http:// www.envfor.nic.in).

As we know, most of the problems of environmental degradation arise because of the open access or common pool nature of the environment. In view of this, where technically feasible and economically viable, transforming the open access and common pool environmental resources into some sort of state or private property through the creation of property rights could resolve the problems of environmental degradation. An example of use of this measure is the privatization of degraded revenue lands (state property) and village common lands (CPRs) in West Bengal through granting of land pattas (leases) to individuals. This helped resolve the problem of their degradation and transformed those lands into productive private property (Singh, 1994 a: 149-163 and Singh and Shishodia, 2007: 221).

28.3 Direct Controls and Regulation

Conventionally, direct controls, or regulations are given effect through governmental orders, or pronouncements by judiciary. In certain cases, laws also are enacted which stipulate that, for instance, you are not allowed to pollute the air above a certain level and if you do, you will be fined, or imprisoned, or both. This form of intervention has high costs of administration and compliance, is often inflexible and provides little incentive for innovation to reduce environmental degradation. For all these reasons, the use of regulatory instruments in isolation from other measures is unlikely to be the least-cost method of achieving environmental objectives in many cases. Control and regulation compares unfavorably with the use of market-based approaches such as taxes and emission charges. Despite its weaknesses, control and regulation is still the predominant instrument for addressing environmental problems in most countries, including India.

28.4 Environmental Standards

Environmental standards refer both to the acceptable levels of specified environmental quality parameters at different categories of locations (ambient standards), as well as permissible levels of discharges of specified wastes into streams by different classes of activities (emission standards).
The NEP 2006 advocates the following three specific measures to improve the effectiveness of environmental standards:

1. Set up a permanent machinery comprising experts in all relevant disciplines to review notified ambient and emissions standards in the light of new scientific and technological information as they become available, and changing national circumstances, ensuring adequate participation by potentially impacted communities, and industry association;
2. Strengthen the network for monitoring ambient environmental quality, including monitoring through participation by local communities, and public -private partnerships; and
3. Progressively ensure real -time, and on-line availability of the monitoring data.

28.5 Economic Instruments

This set of instruments affect costs and benefits of alternative actions open to economic agents, and thereby influence the behaviour of decision makers in such a way that alternatives are chosen that lead to an environmentally more desirable situation than in the absence of the instrument. Economic instruments aim to bridge the gap between the private and social costs by internalizing all external costs to their sources, namely, the producers and consumers of resource depleting and polluting commodities. Such instruments are often referred to as market-based instruments, as they work by using market signals such as prices, emission charges / taxes, and subsidies to encourage socially better decisions.

Pollution of water bodies and degradation of land due to excessive use of chemicals in agriculture could be mitigated through the use of organic manures, and organic pesticides and the problem of soil salinity and water-logging created by excessive irrigation could be resolved by the use of micro irrigation technologies such as sprinklers and drips. Similarly the problem of air pollution engendered by the increased use of fossil fuels could be solved through the use of renewable sources of energy such as animal power, solar energy, hydropower, and biogas. But to motivate the farmer to adopt the new eco-friendly technologies, it is necessary for policy makers to ensure that the new eco-friendly technologies are financially superior to the old environment -depleting ones and that the farmer has access to the requisite credit facilities and technical information and guidance.

Viable and sustainable conservation of the environment requires the participation of multiple stakeholders’, particularly local people's participation in planning, implementation, and monitoring of environmental projects. In seeking to realize partnerships among the diverse stakeholders, it is essential on the part of the government agencies involved to eschew the confrontational posturing adopted in many cases in the past. While it is not possible that the interests and perceptions of all stakeholders will converge on each case, nevertheless, it is necessary to realize that progress will be seriously impeded if the motives of other partners are called into question during public discourse. It is also essential that all partnerships are realized through, and are carried out in terms of the principles of good governance, in particular, transparency, accountability, cost effectiveness, and efficiency.

The NEP- 2006 identifies a number of specific themes for partnerships, a few of which are stated below:

1. Public -Community Partnership: This is intended to seek the cooperation of public agencies and local communities in the management of a given environmental resource, each partner bringing agreed resources, assuming specified responsibilities, and with defined entitlements. The Joint Forest Management programme is an example of this kind of partnership.
2. Public-Private Partnerships: In this arrangement, specified public functions with respect to environment management are contracted out competitively to private providers, e.g., monitoring of environment quality.
3. Public -Community-Private Partnerships: In this system, the partners assume joint responsibility for a particular environmental function, with defined obligations and entitlements for each, with competitive selection of the private sector partner, e.g., afforestation of degraded forests.
4. Public -Voluntary Organization Partnerships: This is similar to public -private partnerships, in respect of functions in which voluntary organizations may have a comparative advantage over others, the voluntary organizations, in turn, being selected competitively, e.g. environmental awareness raising.
5. Public-Private-Voluntary Organization Partnerships: In this arrangement, the provision of specified public responsibilities is accomplished on competitive basis by the private sector, and the provision is monitored by competitively selected voluntary organizations, e.g. “Build, Own, Operate” sewage and effluent treatment plants.

To sum up, we could say that we now have the requisite knowledge of tools, techniques and instruments of environment management available in India and we also have a National Environment Policy in vogue. What we need is a strong political will at the national and state levels and a congenial political and economic environment to use appropriate measures to mitigate the problems of environmental degradation in the large interest of society as a whole.