Discussions so far: Environment

[Sanjeev Sabhlok <sabhlok@almaak.usc.edu>]

SUMMARY OF DISCUSSIONS SO FAR

TOPIC:  RESTORING ENVIRONMENT

Utkarsh proposed:
----------------
· Enact/enforce legislation to protect and expand national parks 

· Pass and enforce Stricter Pollution control legislation for the new
automobiles

· Enforce existing laws on Industry to Improve Air Quality

· Reward companies limiting air/ water pollution by more than 10% of the
mandated limits by tax breaks or preference in government contracts

· Introduce air quality index in top 100 cities and legislate goals for
department of environment to improve on these index by 5% every year for
next 5 years

· Introduce similar water quality index in top 10 rivers in 100 cities and
legislate goals for department of environment to improve on these index by
5% every year for next 5 years

· Encourage State/local Government To Introduce Laws for cities to set
aside a certain percentage of city area for forestation over next ten
years

· privatize wood based industries e.g. paper; introduce legislation for
such companies to plant ten times the trees cut for their business use and
provide such records to department of environment and independent
environment groups

· Provide tax Breaks for Private companies to promote Bio Gas concept at
the village level to produce electricity

· Introduce severe fines on companies / individuals breaking environment
laws

· Fund department of environment personnel salaries from fine levied on
companies breaking environment laws · Provide some government funding to
automobile industry consortium to invest in low or no pollution cars by
2010

. Open the power generation market to foreign companies to invest in new
technologies


Puneet's response:
-----------------
Some of the suggestions here are nice but how about the workability
of such solutions? For one I would postpone any finer details of how
we solve huge issues such as pollution and population without a close
study of the problem and pros and cons of each solution. Some of points
that come to my mind immediately are:

what causes most of pollution in India today? Air, land/topsoil, water,
noise etc...

what is the impact of raising cost of one wrt another? eg if autorickshaws
running on subsidized kerosine is found to cause more pollution than
say the new ganeration cars? how about the burning of coal? is the 
planting of 10 times # trees going to hike paper prices to have negative
impact on other areas? do we need to fund research such as you've
suggested below when richer countries can and should too? 

I guess what I'm suggesting is a need to do a professional study of the subject
giving the responsibility and trust to the best in the field and go by
thier solution. This I believe should be our principle in general on all
issues. Let us not make decisions based on our opinions, feelings or
even desires to see a change in the status quo while losing focus on the
capability of doing it. Almost all of us agree on this but forget very
often.

So BDP should make a high level commitment to protecting the environment
with aggressive implementation of the scientific/economic solution after
a through study of the subject by the most capable body. In many respects
this is attempted by a lot of political parties but few carry out what
they plan on doing, i.e a basic problem also lies in execution. 
In some respects the execution depends on the system that exists and
can be a limiting factor too. I notice the word "enforce" in many of
your suggestions, that I believe is the tougher part.

Government must provide governance, a system, by placing the right
people to make the right decisions. 
We can set goals such as you have on some items (reduce pollution and track
over years with positive feedback for emplyees and companies doing so).
We can plan on how we will go about pursuing these goals (i.e how if we
tie back results with promotion/punishment we will get there). Infact
this model would apply to most of the problems and not just environment,
basically setting up of a 'system' which is self correcting and 
self regulatory.

Anyway, I guess my suggestion is we refrain from trying to solve issues
of population, pollution, poverty at a definitive level beyond a high level
behavorial description of how to solve them and who we recruit to help
provide the right answers to these tough questions.

Sanjeev's response:
-------------------
My quick take:

I agree with Puneet here. That is what is our goal. What I talking with
Utkarsh today over phone is the same thing: we have a tremendous amount of
research avaialable today, and we need to get its best nuggets and
disseminate the findings. 

In this context, one of the fundamental things that I have to say (based
on research findings of others) is that the environment is not a critical
issue at all. I have right now, in front of me, charts which show the
relative low level of pollution of developinig nations compared with the
developed ones. In all rich nations, the trend was the following:

Intially there was a great amount of pollution
With pollution and money came anti-pollution research and technology
With that came less pollution
Today Los Angeles has the lowest levels of pollution in the past 3
decades. The Thames is completely purified, the acid rain problem has
reduced in Europe, etc.

Julian Simon is an excellent researcher on these and similar areas. 

The best will be to, in my current view, classify our discussions/ agendas
into category I and category II agendas:

Category I would include things like economic reform, administrative
reform, educational reform, and urban reform. Banking reform, labor
reform, tariff reform, etc., etc. This is a huge area in itself.

Category II could take care of environment, population, affirmative
action, etc.

It would be best to advertize the group through Category I issues, and to
keep a relatively low profile on Category II - while not ignoring these
issues.

Just a quick thought. 

Utkarsh's response:
-------------------
This is great. My reason to write ten points is not to define an
agenda but is to open a debate where we as all can bring this issues
to define this movement. I agree with Sanjeev that we should focus on
category I issues. But in my personal thought we need to go a bit more
in detail as what do you prospose to make that change. Like the points
Puneet brought up. We as a group should encourage experts in the field
of environment or any other issue we think is important to join us and
formulate a detailed policy statement. Everyone knows open economy is
the key, everyone knows polution is becoming a problems in rivers and
cities. But we have to be able to stand up and say that we have looked
at the problem in rather detail and can provide solution 1, 2, 3. For
example if you want to privatise any industry, it will bring massive
lay-offs. As a political entity BDP has to explain to these people as
what exactly we will do for people who loose their jobs once we
privatise steel or banking or any other industry.

That is why I feel the job is two field. One we have to go out and
tell as many people as possible that here is a group who means
business and who means to the right thing. But when these people
approach us we should be able to tell them what we stand for and not
just superficially but we know the depth of the subject. Secondly
success of BDP will depend on inviting people from every branch of
science, philosophy, writers, policy makers, docotors and every
concerned soul out there for India.

Again my reason to write these are points on some subject is to focus
groups attention to real issues.