Proposal for Indian Environmental Service

Proposal for Indian Environmental Service

Subject – Environment

Context – The Supreme Court has asked the Government if it will create an Indian Environmental Service (IES) as recommended by a committee headed by former Cabinet secretary T.S.R Subramanian in 2014.

Concept –

• The Subramanian committee was set up in August 2014 to review the country’s green laws and the procedures followed by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC). It suggested several amendments to align with the Government’s economic development agenda.
• The report proposed an ‘Environmental Laws (Management) Act’ (ELMA), that envisioned fulltime expert bodies—National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) and State Environmental Management Authority (SEMA)—to be constituted at the Central and State levels respectively to evaluate project clearance.
• The report also recommends that an “environmental reconstruction cost” should be assessed for each project on the basis of the damage caused by it to the environment and this should be added into the cost of the project. This cost has to be recovered as a cess or duty from the project proponent during the life of the project.
• It proposed a National Environment Research institute “on the lines of the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education” to bring in the application of high-end technology in environment governance and
• It also proposed, an Indian Environment Service to recruit qualified and skilled human resource in the environment sector.