India needs better implementation of policies for sound environmental governance.

After the Himalayan debate on whether India's glaciers are receding or not, a new report by R K Pachauri headed The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) has slammed the Indian government for 'poor environmental governance' and suggested drastic changes in the design and implementation of national policies to reverse the damage done so far.

The report will be unveiled in New Delhi tomorrow (November 20, 2009), days ahead of IPCC's historic Copenhagen Climate Change summit, by India's vocal environment minister Jairam Ramesh, with whom IPCC chairperson Pachauri publicly differed on the receding glaciers issue recently.

The report GREEN India 2047 is a sequel to TERI's 1997 study 'Looking back to Think Ahead'. It raises serious questions on India's policies in the agriculture sector and calls its subsidies in the water and energy sectors 'environmentally perverse and socially regressive'.

"It (the report) examines some of the reasons behind weak environmental institutions in the form of inadequate devolution of powers and resources, low budgetary priority, lack of necessary expertise, poor systems of accountability and inadequate emphasis on research and quality data," a summary of the report circulated ahead of its public unveiling said.

It also points out major lacunae in the design and implementation of environmental policy and legislation in the country including lack of credible incentive-based pollution deterrence.

On 'environmental justice', the report contends that while judicial intervention in matters of the environment may have widened its scope, the courts can't serve as alternative policy evolution fora.

TERI's conservative estimates suggest that economic cost of pollution (water and air) and resource degradation (forest and land) is to the tune of 4% of India's GDP and over 800,000 premature deaths every year. It also suggests that emphasising on just three sectors — renewable energy, energy efficiency and afforestation) — might provide employment to over 7% of India's working population by 2031.

While air pollution has turned out to be one of the biggest killers in urban areas, household waste is a ubiquitous feature of urban and peri-urban landscape of India. New lifestyles of the hi-tech and 'on the go' population has also resulted in differential patterns of consumption and environmental degradation impacts the poor disproportionately, the report points out.