BENGALURU: Soon after the Environmental Performance Index- 2022, report showing India ranking last - 189, with a score of 18.9 was released, experts, serving and retired government officials have expressed their displeasure.
Officials from the ministry of environment and forests and Niti Ayog are working on submitting a cor-rejoinder to the Yale Centre for Environmental Law and Policy, Yale University, Centre for International Earth Science Information Network, Columbia University and McCail MacBain Foundation, seeking an explanation of how the country can rank the least.
A senior ministry official told The New Indian Express: “On some many parametres we need to pull up our socks like addressing water and air pollution, water contamination and forest degradation. While India’s policies are far better than that of countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan, we cannot be ranking last.”
Experts point that it is shocking and sad. They state while policies chalked out are good, the targets to be achieved are far fetched. “India made promises at Cop-26 to reduce coal emissions. But recently gave permission for coal mining to meet power crises. So actions do not match claims. However the lowest ranking is not acceptable,” said HC Sharatchandra, retired KSPCB, Chairman.
Sharachchandra Lele, Distringuished Fellow, Environmental Policy and Governance said that the EPI ranking is not to say that India's performance on environmental front has been stellar or even positive in last 2-4 years or more. “Speeding up environmental and forest clearances has been the goal of MOEFCC since several years and not on rigour of assessment or number of proposals denied because they were harmful. Progress on air and water pollution has been paltry-- notwithstanding grand plans and programmes. But the EPI assessment does not help in any way: it will make the government hide behind the excuse of biased foreign thinking,” he said.
As per the 2020 report, India ranked 168 and 177 in 2018. the assessment has been done on 40 criteria including environmental risk exposure, air quality, sanitation, health, air pollution, drinking water quality, water sources, waste water management, investment, green innovation and national leadership around climate change.
N H Ravindranath, United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change, member said, the solutions for improving ranking are known and the problems are also known. The issue is in implementation, which can help improve ranking. With work, it can be improved to within 100.