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| Thursday, 19 August 2004 |
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Towards a Stakeholder Environment by Chandani Jayatilleke
The Central Environment Authority (CEA), the major State body which manages and controls pollution and protects the environment in the country vows to create a civic minded, future generation through schoolchildren who would be taught to love and protect the country's environment. In this context, the CEA has launched a project called 'Pioneer' in schools through which the students are being taught to admire the environment and appreciate the importance of having clean environs for quality living, Director General, CEA, Manel Jayamanna told the Daily News in an interview. By 2007, CEA plans to connect almost all schools to the 'Pioneer' network and promote environment-friendly products among the masses. "For this, we want to persuade every industry that discharges pollutants to obtain an EPL (Environment Protection Licence) from the CEA, ensuring the country's industries are 100% environment-friendly by that time," Jayamanne said. CEA will also take tough legal action against those who put the environment in danger and abuse environmental resources in the name of industries or any other activity, she said. However, she added although the CEA's mandate is to protect the environment and control pollution, they do not intend to mitigate punishments only. "We very much need the support and the cooperation of the people to fulfil this task. Everybody should realise that they all have to play a role in protecting the environment," she said. Excerpts from the interview: In Sri Lanka people have no concern over the environment - when it comes to solid waste management, people travelling in posh vehicles and people living in salubrious environments, have a problem of respecting and heeding instructions given by the authorities. Though they live in good environs, they keep on polluting the other people's environs. Majority of such people throw their garbage on the roads elsewhere, polluting the environs enjoyed by someone else. We can't understand why they cannot think that there is a perception behind our instructions and regulations. That's why we need to put much emphasis in training our children to love nature. There's an improvement in people's awareness on these issues. But it is not up to our expectation. For instance, we recently conducted a campaign down this road (in front of the CEA building in Battaramulla) to detect those who throw garbage on the road - with the support of Police. Within a week, we caught about 80 people - all of them are from affluent families, travelling in vehicles and who have the capacity and space to maintain a degradable garbage bin in their own garden. (This bin degrades garbage except, polythene, plastics and glass stuff and produces compost). But they didn't know how to maintain such a garbage bin and make compost out of their garbage. When we explained this theory, most of them did purchase the bin at a cost of Rs. 1,350. This shows that there is a gap in providing correct information and guiding the public on managing waste. If we can accelerate this process and carry out such inspections in other areas and publicise the garbage bin concept - things would be different. Since the garbage collection issue comes under the local authorities, they should effectively implement solutions to the problem. We can always assist them with necessary guidelines and technologies. "We can also assist in educating people, but local authorities should perform the job." We spoke to a person who happened to be an architect who has a beautiful house in a 30-perch land. "But he says he can't keep garbage in his own garden. Being an architect, he couldn't think about keeping the other people's environment clean and tidy. He was selfish - when we tried to convince him of this fact, he said it is the duty of the local authority to clean the environment. I asked him how much he pays as a tax payer. He didn't want to give an answer. Instead he got angry and shouted at me. Some people pay only Rs. 1,000 as taxes to the local government authority for a year and expect the local body to do everything from providing street lights, road maintenance to cleaning garbage. Practically, this is unfair. People should also help keep the city clean". Mandate of the CEA The CEA's mandate is to control pollution and protect and manage the environment to provide a quality environment to the people. Within this mandate it is important to mention, how we control and mitigate the environment. Every industry that discharges pollution should have an EPL, a licence issued by the CEA to environment-friendly industries. Through EPLs, what we are trying to do is to encourage industrialists to treat the pollution to a certain standard before discharging to the environment and to make sure that the discharge does not contain any harmful elements. We monitor such industries on a regular basis after issuing the licence - though we don't have a 100% perfect mechanism to carry out the inspections. If we found out that the industry does not heed to our rules and regulations during these inspections, we take necessary steps to cancel the licence. Firstly we talk to the party and advise them and try to correct the situation. If it does not work and if they do not cooperate, we take nothing but legal action and cancel the licence. The CEA also acts on complaints made by the public by writing or by calling. "We have a separate unit to handle complaints and there are two officials who would go on regular inspections. We receive about 10 - 15 complaints a day, making the list quite long. But somehow we try to visit the site within two weeks after the complaint. We have only 11 vehicles, for 200 odd staff. When we assign these vehicles for various duties, sometimes, in an emergency we have only one stand-by vehicle for inspections, which is not sufficient". Strengthened staff Though the staff strength earlier was not enough, we now have strengthened the division, with a group of 14 new officers. The new chairman has also taken measures to set up a hot line for complaints (2872602). However people also call in and provide wrong information to take revenge from their neighbours and from relations. We have a committed staff. Many people are young and qualified - 70% of them are science graduates/PhD holders. They are very keen and active, so that we can manage our duties." Challenge The biggest challenge at present is how to get the cooperation of the relevant groups to protect the environment. It's not only the CEA's responsibility, but it's every individual's responsibility, everybody is a stakeholder in this mission. But every time, when something goes wrong, people blame CEA, saying that CEA is not doing anything. Therefore, our biggest challenge is to rally round people and get their support. We are not pressurised by any politician or political party. The present Minister and the chairman are very practical and very concerned over environmental issues. Even when the Minister wants to advocate or advise people on environmental issues, he always consults us or gets our opinion. We want to tell the industrialists, in many instances what, they call waste and discharge is their profit. In other words, it's not necessarily waste. Therefore, it could be their profit which is going down the drain. Your garbage is your profit, although many people are still unprepared to accept this concept. I want to tell the industrialists, they must take it from that point and explore opportunities to find out how they could recycle and reuse waste. On the other hand, the future lies in environment-friendly products. In the global economy, the consumers are careful to chose such products. If the consumers come to know the products which they buy, come from industries that damage the environment, they would reject them. There are a number of indicators to gauge environment-friendly products, including the ISO certification and EPL licence. Otherwise they can't prove, their products are environment-friendly. The CEA will also expose the people and industries which do not adhere to rules and regulations of the CEA through various media including the web. Co-operation We don't like to mitigate punishments only. We would like them to cooporate with the CEA to minimise and control and manage pollution, because then only the industrialists will have long-term profits and commercially viable products. And industrialists must think now, that conventional or historical management rules alone won't help them to run a successful business. They have a social responsibility too. We want them to act with sound responsibility. If they do not act with responsibility, they would have to suffer. We have also launched a program to educate school children on environment issues - through a program called 'Pioneer' where we teach them to love the environment and protect it for other generations. This is aimed at creating a civic minded generation in the future. We would like to make a pyramid - full of stakeholders to promote this concept. Nowadays, people join pyramids to make money. Why can't they initiate a pyramid concept to protect the environment. Isn't that the social responsibility of every human being?. |
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