Even as the Centre has made environment impact assessment mandatory for large construction projects, a central guideline to assist the building contractors on the steps to follow, is expected in July.

The guideline will cover energy conservation, sewage treatment and disposal, noise and air pollution and solid waste management in large buildings as well as prescribe steps to facilitate use of public transport to reach the building.

According to the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest, the guidelines would be applicable for new buildings with a capacity of accommodating 1000 or more persons, or if the daily sewage outflow is 50,000 litres or more, or if the investment in the project is more than 50 crore.

“An important gap in our environmental regulatory system was finally filled last year when environment impact assessment was made mandatory for large construction projects. This has caused some heartburning in the construction industry. This is only natural as nobody likes to be controlled if he was not earlier,” Union Environment Secretary Dr Pradipto Ghosh said, addressing a function on World Environment Day.

Admitting that some of the difficulties expressed by the industry are genuine and may lead to delay in obtaining environmental clearances, he said that the upcoming guideline would help the industry in spelling out the steps that they are required to take.

Interestingly, the ministerial announcement to check mushrooming of large construction projects coincides with a United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) report that identifies Delhi as one of the cities which grew enormously in the last two decades without caring for environmental conservation.

UNEP report

Focussing on some of the Asian cities, the UNEP report says that in 1975, Delhi had a population of 4.4 million or 3.3 per cent of India’s urban population, which had grown to well over 12 million by 2000. By 2010, it is set to rise to nearly 21 million and the Delhi’s growth is concentrated in the suburbs of Faridabad, Ghaziabad and Gurgaon.

Titled as ‘One Planet Many People: Atlas of our Changing Environment’, the new report compares satellite images of the past few decades with contemporary ones.

The atlas, produced in collaboration with organisations including the United States Geological Survey and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), highlights the theme of Green Cities, showing explosive growth and changes around some of the major cities of the world such as Beijing, Dhaka, Delhi and Santiago.

“Cities pull in huge amounts of resources including water, food, timber, metals and people. They export large amounts of wastes including household and industrial wastes, waste water and the gases linked with global warming. Thus their impact stretches beyond their physical borders affecting countries, regions and the planet as a whole,” said Klaus Toepfer, UNEP’s executive director.