National Environmental Policy, 2006

(NEP, 2006)

Dr. Atal Bihari Das

Department of Analytical and Applied Economics
Utkal University
Policies Made In India Before NEP, 2006:

• Environment Protection Act, 1986

• National Forest Policy, 1988
• National Conservation Strategy and Policy Statement on
Environment and Development, 1992
• Policy Statement On Abatement Of Pollution, 1992

Other Policies Related to Environmental

Planning:
• National Agriculture Policy, 2000
• National Population Policy, 2000
• National Water Policy, 2002
Introduction to National Environmental Policy,
2006

• The National Environment Policy was first formulated in 2006, by

Government of India, Ministry of Environment and Forest

• The National Environment Policy seeks to extend the coverage, and

fill in gaps that still exist, in light of present knowledge and
accumulated experience. It does not displace, but builds on the
earlier policies

• The dominant theme of this policy is that conservation

of environmental resources is necessary to secure livelihoods and
well being of all rather than the degradation of the resources
Objectives Of National Environmental Policy,
2006
• Conservation of Critical Environmental Resources:
To protect and conserve critical ecological systems and resources, and
invaluable natural and man-made heritage, which are essential for life
support, livelihoods, economic growth, and a broad conception of human
well-being.
• Intra-generational Equity: Livelihood Security for the Poor:
To ensure equitable access to environmental resources and quality for all
sections of society, and in particular, to ensure that poor communities, which
are most dependent on environmental resources for their livelihoods, are
assured secure access to these resources
• Inter-generational Equity:
To ensure judicious use of environmental resources to meet the needs and
aspirations of the present and future generations
• Integration of Environmental Concerns in Economic and Social Development:
To integrate environmental concerns into policies, plans, programmes, and
projects for economic and social development
• Efficiency in Environmental Resource Use:
To ensure efficient use of environmental resources in the sense of reduction
in their use per unit of economic output, to minimize adverse environmental
impacts
• Environmental Governance:
To apply the principles of good governance (transparency, rationality,
accountability, reduction in time and costs, participation, and regulatory
independence) to the management and regulation of use of environmental
resources
• Enhancement of Resources for Environmental Conservation:
To ensure higher resource flows, comprising finance, technology,
management skills, traditional knowledge, and social capital, for
environmental conservation through mutually beneficial multi-stakeholder
partnerships between local communities, public agencies, the academic and
research community, investors, and multilateral and bilateral development
partners
Principles of National Environmental Policy,
2006
• Human Beings are at the Centre of Sustainable Development
Concerns
• Right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet
developmental and environmental needs of present and future
generations
• In order to achieve sustainable development, environmental
protection shall constitute an integral part of the development
process and cannot be considered in isolation from it
• Where there are credible threats of serious or irreversible damage
to key environmental resources, lack of full scientific certainty shall
not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to
prevent environmental degradation
• In various public actions for environmental conservation, economic
efficiency would be sought to be realized
Strategies and Actions of National
Environmental Policy, 2006

 Process Related Reforms

 Substantive Reforms
Process Related Reforms
Approach:
The objective is to reduce delays and levels of decision-making, realize
decentralization of environmental functions, and ensure greater transparency
and accountability
Framework for Legal Actions:
• The present approach to dealing with environmentally unacceptable behaviour in
India has been largely based on criminal processes and sanctions
• Although criminal sanctions, if successful, may create a deterrent impact, in
reality they are rarely fruitful for a number of reasons. On the other hand, giving
unfettered powers to enforcement authorities may lead to rent-seeking
• Civil law, on the other hand, offers flexibility, and its sanctions can be more
effectively tailored to particular situations
• The evidentiary burdens of civil proceedings are less daunting than those of
criminal law. It also allows for preventive policing through orders and injunctions
• Accordingly, a judicious mix of civil and criminal processes and sanctions will be
employed in the legal regime for enforcement, through a review of the existing
legislation
• Both civil and criminal penalties would be graded according to the severity of the
Substantive Reforms:
Environment and Forests Clearances:
• Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) will continue to be the principal
methodology for appraising and reviewing new projects
• The assessment processes are under major revision in line with the Govindarajan
Committee recommendations
• Under the new arrangements, there would be significant devolution of powers to
the State/UT level
• However, such devolution, to be effective, needs to be accompanied by adequate
development of human and institutional capacities
Coastal Areas:
• Development activities in the coastal areas are regulated by means of the Coastal
Regulation Zone notifications and Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM)
plans made under them
• The ICZM plans should be reviewed at pre-determined intervals to take account
of changes in geomorphology, economic activities, settlement patterns, and
coastal and marine environmental conditions
• Decentralize, to the extent feasible, the clearance of specific projects to State
level environmental authorities, exempting activities, which do not cause
significant environmental impacts, and are consistent with approved ICZM plans
Living Modified Organisms (LMOs):
• The use of genetically modified plants and animals are very helpful for progress, but
can also pose significant risks to ecological resources, and perhaps, human and animal
health. These risks can be reduced by:
(i) Reviewing the regulatory processes for LMOs so that all relevant scientific
knowledge is taken into account, and ecological, health, and economic concerns are
adequately addressed
(ii) Periodic review of the National Bio-safety Guidelines, and Bio-safety Operations
Manual to ensure that these are based on current scientific knowledge
(iii) Ensuring the conservation of bio-diversity and human health when dealing with
LMOs in transboundary movement in a manner consistent with the multilateral Bio-
safety Protocol
Environmentally Sensitive Zones:
• Identify and give legal status to Environmentally Sensitive Zones in the country having
environmental entities with “Incomparable values” requiring special conservation
efforts
• Formulate area development plans for these zones on a scientific basis, with
adequate participation by the local communities
• Create local institutions with adequate participation for the environmental
management of such areas, to ensure adherence to the approved area development
plans, which should be prepared in consultation with the local communities
Monitoring of Compliance:
• Even after proper planning, if the execution of the plan is not
successful, it can make the whole project to fail its objectives. To
avoid such failure, the following methods are used:
(i) Take measures, including capacity development initiatives to
enable Panchayati Raj Institutions and urban local bodies to
undertake monitoring of compliance with environmental
management plans. Measures will also be taken to encourage
municipalities to annually report their environmental performance
to their governing bodies
(ii) Develop feasible models of public-private partnerships to
leverage financial, technical, and management resources of the
private sector in setting up and operating infrastructure for
monitoring of environmental compliance, with ironclad safeguards
against possible conflict of interest or collusion with the monitored
entities
 Use of Economic Principles in Environmental
Decision-making:
• It is important to understand the financial aspects
of the works done for the environmental
conservation to keep it in check with respect to the
country’s economic conditions
• Use of existing policy instruments, such as the
fiscal regime, may significantly reduce or eliminate
the need for enhanced institutional capacities to
administer the incentive based instruments
• In future, accordingly, a judicious mix of incentives
and fiats based regulatory instruments would be
considered for each specific regulatory situation
Strategies Used for Environmental Reforms:
Land Degradation:
• Adoption of scientific and traditional sustainable land use practices
through research and development
• Pilot scale demonstrations and farmers’ training
• Promote reclamation of wasteland and degraded forest land
to reduce desertification through action plans

Forests:
• To formulate an innovative strategy for increase of forest
• Afforestation of degraded forest land, wasteland and tree cover on
private or revenue land

Wildlife:
• Expanding the Protected Area Network
• Paralleling multi-stakeholder partnerships for afforestation
• Encouraging eco-tourism at wildlife sites
• Implementing measures for captive breeding and release into the
wild identified endangered species.
Biodiversity:
• Strengthen the protection of biodiversity hot spots
• Pay attention to the potential impacts of development projects on
biodiversity resources and natural heritage
• Conservation of Genetic material of threatened species of flora and
fauna

Wetlands:
• Identification of valuable wetlands and to prevent their degradation
and enhance their conservation
• Sustainable tourism strategies for identified wetlands
• To take explicit account of impacts on wetlands of significant
development projects.

Conservation of Man-made Heritage :

• Setting ambient environmental standards, especially for air quality,
the potential impacts on designated heritage sites
• Integrated regional development plans formulation
Environmentally Sensitive Zones:
• Identify ESZs
• Formulate area development plans
• Create local institutions for the environmental management of such areas.

Sustainable Mountain Development:

• Norms for infrastructure construction in mountain regions Promotion of
organic farming
• Sustainable tourism

Sustainable Coastal Resources:

• Sustainable management of mangroves
• Protection to coastal environment

Conservation of Freshwater Resources:

• River management
• Groundwater management

Pollution Abatement

Climate Change
Social Forestry
Meaning

• Social forestry is the management and development of forest with

afforestation on barren lands to achieve environmental benefit and
rural development
• In simple words, it is the practice of forestry of the people, forestry
by the people and forestry for the people
• The term was first used by the National Commission on Agriculture,
Government of India, in 1976 (Sixth Five Year Plan)
• The aim of social forestry is taking the pressure off the forests and
making use of all unused and fallow land
• This concept of village forests to meet the needs of the rural people
is not new. It has existed through the centuries all over the country
but it has been given a new character recently
The social forestry practices
• Raising windbreaks on dry farm lands
• Planting shelterbelt
• Planting along roadsides
• Planting in village common lands and waste lands
• Planting along the railway lines and canal banks
• Planting small wood lot in farm lands if it is large
• Planting foreshore areas of irrigation tanks
• Reclamation of highly degraded and eroded soils
• Afforestation of command areas of irrigation projects
Objectives
• To fulfill the basic requirements of fuel, fodder, small timber,
supplementary food and income from surplus forest products in
rural areas and replacement of cow dung
• Provision of employment opportunities and to help increase family
income for alleviating poverty
• Development of cottage industries in rural areas
• To organize people in their struggle for socioeconomic development
and to integrate economic gains in the distribution of their benefits
to the rural society
• To provide congenial environment and preserve the cultural identity
of local or indigenous people as their life related to forest
• To indoctrinate the value of village level self sufficiency and self
management in production as well as distribution of forest products
with social justice
• To form the villagers into a well-knit community and an effective
functional unit of society which can shape its own destiny
• Aid in reclamation of degraded lands, conservation of soil and
moisture
• Improvement of agricultural production and prevention of
environmental deterioration through unsustainable practices
• To increase the natural beauty of the landscape, create recreational
forests for the benefit of rural and urban population
• Protection of agricultural fields against wind speed and natural
calamity
• To solve the food scarcity in rural areas to a large extent
• To help increase production of certain edible fruits like cashew,
mango, coconut and palms that have high nutritional value and
grow well under social forestry programme
• To utilize the available land according to its carrying capacity
Components of Social Forestry
1. Farm forestry
Farm forestry is the name given to programmes which promote
commercial tree growing by farmers on their own land. Farm
forestry was defined by NCA (1976) as the practice of forestry in all
its aspects in and the around the farms or village lands integrated
with other farm operations.
2. Extension forestry
Extension forestry is the practice of forestry in areas devoid of tree
growth and other vegetation situated in places away from the
conventional forest areas with the object of increasing the area
under tree growth. It includes the following:
 Mixed forestry
Mixed forestry is the practice of forestry for raising fodder grass
with scattered fodder trees, fruit trees and fuel wood trees on
suitable wastelands, panchayat lands and village common lands
 Shelterbelts
Shelterbelt is defined as a belt of trees and or shrubs maintained
for the purpose of shelter from wind, sun, snow drift, etc.
 Linear strip plantations
These are the plantations of fast growing species on linear strips of
land
3. Rehabilitation of degraded forests
The degraded area under forests needs immediate attention for
ecological restoration and for meeting the socio economic needs of
the communities living in and around such areas.
4. Recreation forestry
Recreation forestry is the practice of forestry with the object of
raising flowering trees and shrubs mainly to serve as recreation
forests for the urban and rural population. This type of forestry is
also known as Aesthetic Forestry which is defined as the practice of
forestry with the object of developing or maintaining a forest of
high scenic value.
Benefits of social forestry
• Increase the supply of fuel wood and fodder
• Generate rural employment
• Maintain ecological balance
• Appropriate use of wastelands
• Promote village and cottage industries
• Induce environmental and tree consciousness among people
• Relieve pressures from natural forests
• Stabilize agricultural production
References
1. https://www.india.gov.in/national-environment-policy-2006
2. Kumar V. (2015), Social forestry in India: concept and schemes. Van Sangyan
Vol. 2, No. 11.