Jahangir Khan Kakar
Unless we realize environmental degradation is criminal, there will be no viable way out of this quagmire that is so densely consuming us. To criminalize something would require some substantive and procedural processes. This hints at creating a Justice System that draws a sharp line between what is right and what is not. Can the current criminal and civil justice system, meant to decide disputes amongst peoples, be applied to doing justice between the Man and his Habitat?
Because it is not Man vs Man, which is already taken care of by the Criminal and Civil Justice System, but because it is Man vs Environment, it would require a fair enough system where the counsel will plead for a 500-year-old Juniper Tree cut down and in pieces mercilessly in some distant environment-free-paradise of the country.
US Environmental Protection Agency defines environmental justice as a system that adopts the whole-people approach regardless of their contexts to consider giving the Environment “fair treatment” and the peoples’ meaningful involvement’ in contributing and partaking their veracious roles ‘to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies’.
This definition has much to offer, such as people and not merely a Government or Governmental agency is considered for fair treatment; it binds the parties together, the Environment on the one end and people on the other, creating the curvature of Man-Environment; it outlays at the highest strategic juncture the broad constitutional-like roles of the peoples towards Environment, and, it provides a model of connectivity between the two ailing sides. In short, it provides the pillars of an environmental justice system.
It would not just be weird but a farce to doing justice between Man and Environment through a certain set of instruments which are engineered fundamentally to decide issues that are between Man and Man, such as a murder altercation or a land or property dispute. The farce part applies the same system to a dispute that is between an industrialist polluting the river by discharging harmful effluents in it or between a person playing an unfit vehicle on the road or a person involved in brazen and wanton deforestation. The outcome is obvious: there would be no justice possible since there is no reason for it to be caused, as there is no substantive or procedural set of things that could decide the matter.
Of all the Environmental Protection Acts of the provinces and that of the ICT, there are provisions for punishing with imprisonment or such financial sums as to the violators of environmental serenity, but nothing much that could ensure environmental justice being done as per its essence as defined by the US-EPA.
To an even more intellectual astonishment, all of the aforesaid Acts do contain a provision to the effect that anyone who contravenes the provisions of those laws (Environmental Protection Acts) will be responsible for restoring the Environment to the condition that prevailed before the contravention. Not debating its highly scientific and ecological limitations of possibilities, the same provision continues to contain that this restoration has to be up to the satisfaction of the concerned Environmental Protection Agencies. Dead end…period…Bureaucracy!
How and in what manner the respective EPAs will decide that restoration has been as per the environmental serenity that prevailed hither to contravention is not provided either by the Acts or by the rules or regulations that follow. Simply put, the sweet will of a few sweet ones for a few sweeter ones decides it.
There is thus a need to first create awareness at the policy level of what actually is climate change and what exactly are the contours of environmental protection. The glimpses then are to be reflected in the making governmental policies Environment specific and Environment sensitive. This is interesting to note that each of the environmental protection acts provides a sustainable development model and a sustainable development management process, but that is hardly taken care of again due to the non-sensitive and ill-informed decision-making apparatus dominated by the Jack of all Trades-Civil Servants who while approving a 100 bedded hospital might not care for an incinerator facility: for an environmentalist, the such hospital would be a disaster.
The Guidelines for Development of the Planning Commission again contain some glimpses of ensuring the membership of the Environment Department in the highest development decision-making forums such as the CDWP, but that too, over time, has turned out to be ceremonial given the loaded guns called bureaucrats whose expertise are not these as detailed under an environmentalist’s or climate change expert’s CVs’.
The environmental acts do provide the environmental tribunals, but again, the decisions there are made on the criminal and civil procedures which are good enough to the restraining end but restrain is half justice done. The composition of the environmental tribunals is not based on professional selective meritocracy but rather the usual rule of thumb of who is more connected gets the seat. Since there are no substantive or procedural bases for criminalizing environmental degradation, the tribunals are helpless in either ordaining certain Environment based decisions or are legally harkened enough to cause environmental justice. All they rely on is the limited environmental protection acts, which do not contain the word Climate, even once.
It is crucial time that we put our environmental house in order right now. Firstly, the question of whether it is both intellectually and administratively wise enough to rely on the constitutionally devolved environmental subject or whether it will be more of material worth that it be commanded from a well-coordinated and participatory singularity. Since devolution, the provinces, in terms of sharing environmental knowledge, expertise and contributions, have recessed poles apart. The centre is as disoriented as much as are the federating units. The centre is still responsible for holding up and implementing international environmental treaties, but at home, it faces the question of disillusioned environmental devolution.
Secondly, the environmental acts are to be revised wholly to contain expert opinions and intake from climate change experts and environmentalists. It does not need to be the brainchild of some fattened bureaucrats. The laws should contain enough substantive provisions to actually criminalize environmental degradation in the manner that it essentially deserves. While doing this, the provisions of punishments must be set in such a manner that it meets the environmental essence. While this is being done, and there is much around the world where it is already being done, the procedural provisions must also be embedded that would draw the whole grand skeleton of the environmental justice system.
Next, environmental tribunals are already in existence. All it would be required would be to rearrange these on the new environmental set of laws. The stereotypical combination of three members, of which one is to be from the judiciary, one from civil service and one from the environment sector, needs to be revised with a more prudent and credible membership.
The sustainable development model parked in the existing acts needs to be exponentially explained, that presently is way too sketchy. It has to be applied to all development and even non-development sectors. Presently, the environmental councils formed under the existing environmental acts are overwhelmingly conservative which are to contain more liberal, independent and multi mix membership with at least two objects in view: grand opening up of the iron-curtained public sector and accommodating the dissent and variety of professional opinion of sector specialists in giving them say audibility in the hermetically sealed decision-making apparatus of the public sector.
Lastly, environmental protection agencies are to be made more independent and free from the vicious claws of public sector bureaucrats. They need to be specialized agencies which they presently are entirely not. Environmental degradation needs to be criminalized not with the existing criminal and civil justice system but with an impeccable environmental justice system that would be able to use all its five senses in approaching environmental degradation. This disillusionment has to end now.
Jahangir Khan Kakar
An Environmental Justice System
Unless we realize environmental degradation is criminal, there will be no viable way out of this quagmire that is so densely consuming us. To criminalize something would require some substantive and procedural processes. This hints at creating a Justice System that draws a sharp line between what is right and what is not. Can the current criminal and civil justice system, mean to decide disputes amongst peoples, be applied to doing justice between the Man and his Habitat?
Because it is not Man vs Man, which is already taken care of by the Criminal and Civil Justice System, but because it is Man vs Environment, it would require a fair enough system where the counsel will plead for a 500-year-old Juniper Tree cut down and in pieces mercilessly in some distant environment-free-paradise of the country.
US Environmental Protection Agency defines environmental justice as a system that adopts the whole-people approach regardless of their contexts to consider giving the Environment “fair treatment” and the peoples’ meaningful involvement’ in contributing and partaking their veracious roles ‘to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies’.
This definition has much to offer, such as people and not merely a Government or Governmental agency is considered for fair treatment; it binds the parties together, the Environment on the one end and people on the other, creating the curvature of Man-Environment; it outlays at the highest strategic juncture the broad constitutional-like roles of the peoples towards Environment, and, it provides a model of connectivity between the two ailing sides. In short, it provides the pillars of an environmental justice system.
It would not just be weird but a farce to doing justice between Man and Environment through a certain set of instruments which are engineered fundamentally to decide issues that are between Man and Man, such as a murder altercation or a land or property dispute. The farce part applies the same system to a dispute that is between an industrialist polluting the river by discharging harmful effluents in it or between a person playing an unfit vehicle on the road or a person involved in brazen and wanton deforestation. The outcome is obvious: there would be no justice possible since there is no reason for it to be caused, as there is no substantive or procedural set of things that could decide the matter.
Of all the Environmental Protection Acts of the provinces and that of the ICT, there are provisions for punishing with imprisonment or such financial sums as to the violators of environmental serenity, but nothing much that could ensure environmental justice being done as per its essence as defined by the US-EPA.
To an even more intellectual astonishment, all of the aforesaid Acts do contain a provision to the effect that anyone who contravenes the provisions of those laws (Environmental Protection Acts) will be responsible for restoring the Environment to the condition that prevailed before the contravention. Not debating its highly scientific and ecological limitations of possibilities, the same provision continues to contain that this restoration has to be up to the satisfaction of the concerned Environmental Protection Agencies. Dead end…period…Bureaucracy!
How and in what manner the respective EPAs will decide that restoration has been as per the environmental serenity that prevailed hither to contravention is not provided either by the Acts or by the rules or regulations that follow. Simply put, the sweet will of a few sweet ones for a few sweeter ones decides it.
There is thus a need to first create awareness at the policy level of what actually is climate change and what exactly are the contours of environmental protection. The glimpses then are to be reflected in the making governmental policies Environment specific and Environment sensitive. This is interesting to note that each of the environmental protection acts provides a sustainable development model and a sustainable development management process, but that is hardly taken care of again due to the non-sensitive and ill-informed decision-making apparatus dominated by the Jack of all Trades-Civil Servants who while approving a 100 bedded hospital might not care for an incinerator facility: for an environmentalist, the such hospital would be a disaster.
The Guidelines for Development of the Planning Commission again contain some glimpses of ensuring the membership of the Environment Department in the highest development decision-making forums such as the CDWP, but that too, over time, has turned out to be ceremonial given the loaded guns called bureaucrats whose expertise are not these as detailed under an environmentalist’s or climate change expert’s CVs’.
The environmental acts do provide the environmental tribunals, but again, the decisions there are made on the criminal and civil procedures which are good enough to the restraining end but restrain is half justice done. The composition of the environmental tribunals is not based on professional selective meritocracy but rather the usual rule of thumb of who is more connected gets the seat. Since there are no substantive or procedural bases for criminalizing environmental degradation, the tribunals are helpless in either ordaining certain Environment based decisions or are legally harkened enough to cause environmental justice. All they rely on is the limited environmental protection acts, which do not contain the word Climate, even once.
It is crucial time that we put our environmental house in order right now. Firstly, the question of whether it is both intellectually and administratively wise enough to rely on the constitutionally devolved environmental subject or whether it will be more of material worth that it be commanded from a well-coordinated and participatory singularity. Since devolution, the provinces, in terms of sharing environmental knowledge, expertise and contributions, have recessed poles apart. The centre is as disoriented as much as are the federating units. The centre is still responsible for holding up and implementing international environmental treaties, but at home, it faces the question of disillusioned environmental devolution.
Secondly, the environmental acts are to be revised wholly to contain expert opinions and intake from climate change experts and environmentalists. It does not need to be the brainchild of some fattened bureaucrats. The laws should contain enough substantive provisions to actually criminalize environmental degradation in the manner that it essentially deserves. While doing this, the provisions of punishments must be set in such a manner that it meets the environmental essence. While this is being done, and there is much around the world where it is already being done, the procedural provisions must also be embedded that would draw the whole grand skeleton of the environmental justice system.
Next, environmental tribunals are already in existence. All it would be required would be to rearrange these on the new environmental set of laws. The stereotypical combination of three members, of which one is to be from the judiciary, one from civil service and one from the environment sector, needs to be revised with a more prudent and credible membership.
The sustainable development model parked in the existing acts needs to be exponentially explained, that presently is way too sketchy. It has to be applied to all development and even non-development sectors. Presently, the environmental councils formed under the existing environmental acts are overwhelmingly conservative which are to contain more liberal, independent and multi mix membership with at least two objects in view: grand opening up of the iron-curtained public sector and accommodating the dissent and variety of professional opinion of sector specialists in giving them say audibility in the hermetically sealed decision-making apparatus of the public sector.
Lastly, environmental protection agencies are to be made more independent and free from the vicious claws of public sector bureaucrats. They need to be specialized agencies which they presently are entirely not. Environmental degradation needs to be criminalized not with the existing criminal and civil justice system but with an impeccable environmental justice system that would be able to use all its five senses in approaching environmental degradation. This disillusionment has to end now.https://republicpolicy.com/climate-change-food-security-agricultural-productivity-and-application-of-nuclear-technology/
