Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
of industrial emissions. The situation in all such pockets suffering air quality
deterioration due to industrial emissions, especially particulates, continues to
be as bad as ever. Compliance with emission limits has been easier to man-
age in cases of large industries, especially multinational and/or private sector
units. Much greater attention needs to be given to regulating the emissions from
medium and small-scale units, which often cause much greater adverse impacts
due to their location in or near densely populated or other sensitive and critical
areas.
Lessons Learned from Indian Experience
Experience to date:
The Indian experience shows that people's support and
pressure, either overt or at least covert, is necessary to obtain any level
of significant success in pollution control. Shortcomings in enforcement
mechanisms may render the efforts of regulatory agencies ineffective unless
public concern and public activism enter into the picture to require improved
regulatory action. Public agitations and public interest litigation can activate
and energize even weak/corrupt/inefficient bureaucratic machinery. People's
concern and interest are much more easily roused when impacts of the envi-
ronmental pollution are easily seen, such as loss of crops, health damage,
offensive odors or visibility loss, or risks to sensitive structures like the
Taj Mahal. Subtle and distant impacts such as greenhouse effect or cli-
mate change are not readily perceived and do not attract public pressure
without long and arduous mass-education and sensitization. Proper selec-
tion of siting and technology for new industrial units appears to be the
most cost-effective method for industrial air pollution control, together with
requirements for continuing self-monitoring. These requirements should be
the responsibility of the government's industry control agency, as part of its
permit system.
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Future:
The government's environmental agency should reinforce the role
of the industry agency by the effective use of the EIA process, which
should spell out in detail the requirements for emissions control as already
noted, including routine periodic monitoring to be done by the industry as
a prerequisite for application for a permit from the industry agency. Also,
the environmental agency should conduct its own periodic monitoring of
industrial emissions as a check to ensure that the industry agency's require-
ments are being observed.
•
It should be noted that while affluent Western industrialized countries under-
stand that effective regulatory monitoring with enforcement is essential for
achieving successful performance by emitters, and do practice such monitor-
ing/enforcement effectively, the authors (who have worked in more than 40
developing countries) do not know of any developing country where this has
yet happened — no doubt because of the traditional “top-down” nature of the
governments. However, the situation is gradually changing in most developing
