Precautionary Principles of Sustainability versus Promotion of the Ease of Doing Business in the Proposed EIA Regulation in India:A Critical Analysis and Application of an Ex-Ante Framework to Review the Regulation

The tenets of environmental policy evolved in India and how precautionary principles of sustainability are sidelined in the draft EIA regulation 2020 are analyzed.The emphasis on exempting several categories of projects from the EIA requirements and public consultation,standardization of sector-specific terms of reference and environmental clearance conditions,and decentralization of the decision-making to simplify and fast-track the environmental clearance procedure for development projects is apparent.The list of projects/activities requiring prior environmental clearance and the procedures reveal that promoting the ease of doing business scores over precautionary principles.Efforts to increase the effectiveness and improve transparency in monitoring the implementation of environmental clearance conditions are visible.Still,the prime issues of improving the efficiency and efficacy of the EIA framework and institutional reforms in the EIA system need to be earnestly addressed.The evaluation using an ex-ante framework unveils the areas needing meticulous attention to revamp the EIA regulation.

Challenges at the early stages of the environmental licensing procedure and potential contributions from geomorphology

Defining impact significance is the main technical task that influences decision-making during the Environmental Licensing Procedure(ELP).The ELP begins with screening to determine potentially significant impacts of the proposed project.Scoping then follows to address any interventions deemed worthy of attention in the production of an Environmental Impact Assessment(EIA).This will include consideration of relevant landforms and geomorphological processes.However,preliminary assessments of environmental impacts often lack the scientific robustness to procure substantive and transactive effectiveness.This review presents an examination of the established practices of screening and scoping while highlighting the foremost challenges to improve the technical grounds of the ELP.The analysis of screening and scoping practices stresses the need for novel methods that ensure the sequential reasoning between their criteria while improving the preliminary evaluation of impact significance.Reducing the inherent subjectivity of discretionary judgment requires scientific methodologies that acknowledge the interaction between the natural system and human interventions,which has been addressed by geomorphological research.The knowledge consolidated in this review opens the gate to explore the compatibility between the United Nations strategy of Ecosystem Approach(EA)with the ELP through a novel geomorphological interpretation of the EIA.Therefore,this diagnosis demonstrate that screening and scoping practices would benefit from reliable methods that balance the precautionary principle with the efficient character required in the ELP.