Ficci's plea for ensuring better environment
In response to the industry underscoring some of its own needs, the US Environment Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman stressed on the need for an engaged and informed public and hoped the MoU with the Indian government and interactions with the industry could be a springboard for cooperation.
According to Salil Singhal, head of the Ficci's environment committee, a technology modernization backlog haunts industry. Imports in the pre-liberalization era weren't the best on offer leading to a "huge technology challenge", and the problem of funding for it. For, conventional norms of financial institutions stand in the way of innovative technology. So, a greater emphasis on research and other aspects has to be backed by innovative funding packages and verification systems.
Despite the US moving firmly out of the Kyoto Protocol on checking climate change, opportunities are visualized for trading with the US companies. Whitman remarked later though the US may be "determined" on staying out of the Protocol but it still has a number of programmes on checking greenhouse gases.
Addressing a plea to Central Pollution Control Board chairman Dilip Biswas, "the absence of strategic action plans" was highlighted. Industry, Mr. Singhal said, is offered no choice other than 100 per cent compliance or closure, a point rebutted by Vijay Panjwani, counsel in the Supreme Court in many environment cases.
Ultimately, admitted Singhal, industry has to internalize environmental responsibility as part of its growth strategy, take an integrated approach to environment, health, safety and quality so companies perform better, make more profits and enjoy greater acceptance.
For Whitman, the mantra was transparency. There is no point in regulations if people don't understand them or know how to address the problem. Flexibility in reaching a goal is fine; government, however, has a responsibility for public health and a responsibility to ensure there is continuous progress.
It is important, said the US EPA administrator, to have measurable, quantifiable goals and it's important to be transparent about these, so that people have confidence and do not feel the need to go to courts.
