LAHORE, Oct 3: Neither the public nor private sectors bother to carry out the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) before launching any industrial development or infrastructure projects.
The construction of The Mall Road underpass, new Lahore airport and Lahore-Rawalpindi Motorway projects and several other projects undertaken by federal and provincial governments were initiated without assessing their impact on environment.
Non-compliance of the EIA rules of the Pakistan Environment Protection Act 1997 (PEPA) is causing fast degradation of the environment.
The EIA, an environmental study and formulation of environmental management of a project, is to evaluate environmental and related social implications (negative and positive) for carrying out a development project of any size before irrevocable decisions are made. It also provides an alternative way to carry out the project if it has an adverse effect on the environment.
The Environment Protection Department (EPD), an executing agency of EIA rules in the province, does not even venture to send legal notices to government departments which have been violating environment laws unabatedly since long.
The tall claims of the environment ministry that it will not allow any government department and the private sector, especially the industrial one, to launch a project without the NOC from the EPD proved mere a statement.
Only 10 cases have been registered with the Environment Tribunal (ET) against the industrialists for setting up units without getting the projects through by the EIA, according to the EPD officials.
However, they came clean that they could not take any action against government departments for violating the EIA rules. They cited lack of resources for the poor implementation of environment laws.
Environment Protection Committee’s Lahore High Court Bar chairman advocate Akhtar Awan told Dawn on Friday that the EPD did not develop any system to press the violators for the implementation of law.
He claimed that not a single case had been registered with the ET under section 12 of PEPA which made it mandatory for the public and private sectors to get their projects approved under the EIA.
He said that Wapda, SNGPL and PTCL should not give connections to industries and government departments without checking the NOC from the EPD.
Mr Akhtar said the EPA director-general was the main executing authority of the EIA rules and unless he (DG) moved against the violators no effort could be succeeded in improving the environment. The EPD should recruit lawyers to fight cases against the violators.
He said the Environment Tribunal comprised a chairman and one technical and legal member, but the tribunal was working with only the chairman these days. There was also a need to improve legislation in this regard, he said.
However, it may be mentioned that the EIA is compulsory before the launch of thermal power generation over 200MW, hydroelectric power generation over 50MV, petroleum refineries, major power transmission lines, including grid stations and nuclear power plants.
Besides, it is required for manufacturing units of chemicals, pesticides and fertilisers, industrial estates, mining and mineral processing, major ports and harbours development, airports, federal and provincial highways, bridges, dams and landfill sites.
Environment advocate Anjum Jawaid Khan said that all the projects especially in the industrial sector should undergo the EIA and be dealt in accordance with its result.
He said the World and Asian Development Banks had announced that no loan would be provided for any project unless it had undergone the EIA. He said the EIA cost only 0.5 per cent of the total cost of a project, therefore, the public and private sectors should not hesitate to undertake EIA.
He also suggested that EPD officers should be trained in a way they could deal with the violators of environmental laws in the province.