New Delhi: The Planning Commission plans to link funding allocations to states to their environmental management, and is putting in place an index to gauge performance.
“The Planning Commission is in the process of developing an environmental performance index (EPI) to incentivise states for environmental performance through budgetary allocations,” minister of state for planning Rajiv Shukla said in a written reply to a question in Parliament on Wednesday.
Shukla also cited rankings of states based on an environmental performance index (EPI) for India published by Current Science in a February study. Delhi ranked 32 among 35 states and union territories.
Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra led the 2012 rankings that measured the performance of the states and union territories with respect to air pollution, forest cover, water quality, water management and climate change.
Environmental problems should not be viewed as a consequence of development alone, but be managed as a “continued focus”, said the study.
The report, compiled in collaboration with the Planning Commission, indicts Indian states, with the exception of Himachal Pradesh, for dismal water management on parameters including the quality of water. Sewage treatment capacity is poor, with 10 states treating nothing and the best four able to process just half of it, the study found.
Capacity is lacking for solid waste management, especially management of hazardous and biomedical waste, the study said, while mentioning Chhattisgarh as an outlier for collecting 98% of municipal solid waste, treating all of its biomedical waste and being capable of disposing 89% of its hazardous waste.
Performance with respect to climate change is based on whether states had prepared action plans for mitigation.
The Planning Commission’s former environment and forest adviser Indrani Chandrasekharan is one of the three authors of the report.
The plan panel’s index takes its cue from Yale University’s EPI, which seeks to aid policy evaluation on the basis of an index constructed with measures relevant to the objectives of protecting ecosystems and natural resources and reducing environmental stress to human health such as air quality, water resources, biodiversity and climate change.
The report has suggested two options for devolving funds using the index: basing 2% of gross budgetary support on the EPI ranking or adding a weightage point of 2% to the performance indicator of the existing devolution formula based on the EPI.
