While the methodology has issues, this is an opportunity for India to study where it stands

Last month, India protested against its ranking on the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) of 2022, prepared by researchers at the Yale and Columbia Universities in the U.S. The report measures 40 performance indicators across 11 categories to measure the “state of sustainability around the world.” India was ranked last (180) with low scores across a range of indicators. The Indian Government as well as environment experts have pointed to the faulty methodology of the index that skews the results in favour of the Global North. Chandra Bhushan, Sharad Lele and Anant Sudarshan discuss the report in a conversation moderated by Sonikka Loganathan. Edited excerpts:

What are the issues with the methodology?

Chandra Bhushan: Rating by its very nature is a subjective exercise. But a good rating is one that tries to reduce subjectivity, normalises all indicators, and then develops consensus around the subjective issues. The first step is to remove subjectivity as much as possible. Every rating will end up comparing apples with oranges, if you don’t normalise the indicators. So, the second step is to normalise indicators. Third, if there is subjectivity, you get experts to generate consensus around it. All three have not been done.

But this was a peer-reviewed study…

Chandra Bhushan: I’m not sure what kind of peer review was done because, if you look at the indicators, even a person with basic knowledge of ratings would tell you that the indicators have not been normalised.

Can you give us an example of where this lack of normalisation has impacted India’s rank in a category?

Chandra Bhushan: EPI has used tree cover loss as an indicator to rate deforestation in a country. Eritrea is the best country [as per the ranking]. The total dense forest cover in Eritrea is only about 50 hectares, which is similar to forest cover in one part of Lutyens’ Delhi. How do you compare absolute tree cover loss of a country with 50 ha dense forest with, say, India with millions of ha of dense forest and a tree cover loss of 1 lakh ha?

Is a rating the right way to be measuring environmental progress? What do you think of the government’s response?

Sharad Lele: There is a difference between an index and a ranking. Indices themselves have very limited value, even if you make them absolute, because they collapse the hugely complex issue of environment into one number. But relative ranking is just useless. For example, you could have all countries between seven and nine out of 10. Some country will still end up at 180 because it is at 7.0 whereas others are 7.1 and above. What does that tell you about environment performance? Nothing.

Now the government, instead of responding and quibbling about details, could have used this occasion to call for a meeting of people within the country who follow these issues, to ask questions about where we are, and put out maybe our own performance index, in a much more nuanced manner that tells us something about where we are with respect to, say, five or 10 years ago

Anant Sudarshan: The EPI has a large data set with a huge amount of information on a whole range of indicators. This is more than just an exercise of coming up with one number— it’s a data collection exercise on a whole range of indicators. Certainly, it would be nice if something similar were produced by our Government. Nevertheless, if you look at every single one of the indicators you’ll find that India does quite badly on most. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to most environmentalists. The point of a rating like this is that it puts together a lot of data and it reminds us that things are not going well on a wide range of environmental outcomes in India.

Chandra Bhushan: But Anant, I also want us to understand how this rating was released and what message it gave out. Its message was: if you are big, if you are middle income or a poor country, if you are in Asia or Africa, you are bad environmentally. But if you are a rich country, you consume a lot, but your local environment is clean, you are the best in the world. I don’t think that’s right. If you want to solve environmental problems, consumption is what you attack. While recognising that India has problems, I am not willing to accept that the Western world is the paragon of environmental performance in the world.

Sharad Lele: Ideally, in an EPI, you would look at outcomes. But in reality, you have very limited data on actual outcomes, so you start using proxies like actions taken towards those outcomes. The main indicator of climate change performance is whether the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is increasing or decreasing. We all know it is increasing. The world is doing terribly on climate change. How do you allocate this global performance index on climate change, or this outcome variable, to different countries? You would see who are the biggest polluters, and, on a per capita basis, it’s the Global North. When you have a global outcome such as climate change, you have to first determine who is responsible for doing what and ask what have you done towards meeting that responsibility. Otherwise a country such as the USA gets high marks for reducing emissions from 18 to 16 tCO2/e/capita/year while the global South, which is sitting at 2-3-4 tCO2e/capita/year and increasing emissions marginally gets minus marks.

Similarly, if biodiversity is construed to be a global common good, and if a country has wiped out its biodiversity, why should it be getting higher marks because it then added one more protected area?

Speaking of biodiversity, how is Brazil ranked much higher than India, despite rampant deforestation in the Amazon rainforest?

Sharad Lele: If you want to measure biodiversity performance, you would see how the biodiversity was last year and whether it has changed this year. Then you would ask whether there are flagship species that you could use as an indicator. Instead, the entire focus of the EPI is on habitat. With some combination of percentage and absolute values, you have the West doing well and South Asia doing badly. There’s a real problem because habitat is being measured in terms of what percentage of the country is under protection. Brazil could be doing well because it’s a big country with a relatively low population density. A significant percentage of Brazil is under protected area. But in a densely populated country like India, you are not going to be able to put a high proportion of area under strict protection.

India puts out the State of Forest report. But the definition of a forest is ever-changing, which is why India has seen an increase in forest cover, as per those reports. Can you contextualise this issue?

Sharad Lele: You used the word forest cover. The EPI uses the word tree cover. Therein lies the story of how India itself is playing around with this issue. We have not asked why we care about forest cover. There are different answers to this, but if you focus on the carbon sequestration benefits of forests, you wouldn’t care whether it is palm or eucalyptus or a natural species which is endemic to India, because it’s all carbon. On the other hand, if you care about biodiversity, you would want to look at forests as an association of species which are part of this landscape and not just a random species planted for the sake of making the place look green. So, why we care about forest cover determines what we measure. To take another angle, if you are a local person who is dependent on forest for livelihood, you would prefer an open canopy forest, and may be trimming the trees to get firewood without cutting down the whole tree. In that case, you would see very little tree crown cover, which is what the Forest Survey of India measures through satellites. So, when the EPI looks at tree cover, they are falling into the same trap. Should they look at tree cover or should they look at forest cover, which means natural forests? In the Indian context, this matters because natural forest cover has gone down, while plantations have increased, revealing the fault lines in this issue.

One solution we’ve seen grow in popularity is tree planting. Is this actually effective?

Chandra Bhushan: Planting trees has become like atoning your environmental sin. This is a very dangerous solution to the kind of environmental problems we have, because we are forgetting the role of different ecosystems.

Anant Sudarshan: One thing that is dangerous is letting only the government define the metrics it will use to measure success without independent scientific scrutiny. In India, we’ve had this massive increase in what is called forest cover, which is all driven by plantations, while natural forests are dropping. In this indicator, EPI is using tree cover loss from satellite data, so India is doing better on this than it should by some metrics. But at least it’s a data point that’s being independently collected and that’s similar across countries. The criticism of Brazil for tree cover loss and the praise of the Indian government for “forest gain” are really talking about two very different things. One is the rainforest disappearing there and one is plantations being added here. I think that’s a place where an independent index helps, because if we can agree on the indicators, we can get an objective basis of measurement.

Sharad Lele: There is a funny contradiction here. When it came to biodiversity, because you couldn’t measure the outcome very well, you put a lot of emphasis on process and said protected areas is the way to get to biodiversity conservation. When it comes to ecosystem services it is also well acknowledged that local community involvement and people’s rights is actually a better way to achieve sustainable enhancement of ecosystem services of all these areas. So how come there is no measure on how much have you decentralised rights over trees or forests, in local communities? If you took that as an indicator, we would be a real laggard in spite of having the Forest Rights Act of 2006.

India ranked 179 in air quality. How do we solve this?

Anant Sudarshan: We have failed to control air pollution so far. This is where these indices are useful. It’s not useful to compare India with London, but you could compare India with other countries at the same income level and the same population density, and there are many countries that are doing better. So, once we notice this we can ask, why are we doing worse? A large part of it is regulation. Ultimately air pollution is the sort of problem that gets solved through economy-wide regulation.

Chandra Bhushan: I agree that there is a regulatory problem with air pollution in India, but there is also a fundamental problem with the economy. No country in the world has been able to solve air pollution without getting rid of biomass or solid fuel. India combusts around 2.2 billion tonnes of material, of which 1.6 billion tonnes are coal and biomass. Biomass is a problem of poverty and coal is the problem of energy access. The way India will reduce its air pollution is also the way it will solve its climate challenge. The fundamental reason why India will not be able to resolve a lot of its air pollution challenge is because of our energy mix. For example, tomorrow, if all the vehicles in India move to electric vehicles, we will be able to reduce our air pollution, cumulatively, by 20%, but 80% problem will not be solved.

In preparation for the upcoming COP 27, what should India be doing, especially since we’ve seen an increased coal production target?

Chandra Bhushan: The Russia-Ukraine crisis could have been an opportunity for all of us to start investing massively in renewable energy. But fossil fuel companies have used this short-term deficit in energy supply as an opportunity to open new fossil fuel establishments. In India, fossil fuel consumption is going to increase in the short term. If we are smart, we will try and peak coal as quickly as possible. That would be our roadmap.

Anant Sudarshan is South Asia Director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago; Sharachchandra Lele is Distinguished Fellow in Environmental Policy and Governance at ATREE, Bengaluru, and Professor at IISER, Pune and SNU, Delhi; Chandra Bhushan is President and CEO of the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology (iFOREST)

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Q. 1 How important is coal for Jharkhand in the present day?

Jharkhand is one of the few states in the country that is blessed with rich mineral wealth. The state contributes to 32% coal reserves in India. Although, coal has always been an important resource for revenue generation for the state. But the state has not attracted investments worthy of its endowments. 
Additionally, lakhs of tribal and indigenous people have been displaced from their lands without proper rehabilitation benefits. It is therefore an irony that Jharkhand illuminates the country with its coal but is forced to live in darkness. Coal is important to Jharkhand but not at the cost of huge societal and environmental loss.

Q2. Is Jharkhand benefiting from coal as expected?

The abundance of mineral wealth has been a resource curse for Jharkhand. The state contributes to 32% coal reserves in India. However, the benefits accrued to the state aren’t in the same proportion and we lose more than we gain. There’s DMF which allows some developmental activities in the mining affected regions and communities, but its functioning needs to be streamline.

Q3. Under what conditions do you want to increase coal production in the state?

With the increase in coal production, state revenue will also increase. However, our government is determined to safeguard the interests and rights of people and state. The Union Government has opened up auctions for commercial mining within the coal sector. The auction area also includes Jharkhand. However, I had requested the central government to provide a moratorium of 6-9 months. In this regard, I had written a letter to Hon’ble Minister of Coal, Mines & Parliamentary Affairs, Government of India requesting that due to COVID-19 pandemic, many domestic/foreign players might not participate in the auction process due to travel restrictions and several enterprises facing financial liquidity crunch.
My government also wants to ensure that steps taken for sustainable mineral development are in harmony with prevalent social and environmental practices and the adverse costs on tribal populace and the ecologically fragile zones do not outweigh the benefits that we might get economically. 

Q4. What do you think are the challenges of coal mining in environmental and social terms? How is the Jharkhand government planning to offset or deal with these?

Over all these years, Jharkhand has been forced to drink ‘laal-paani’ and ‘kaala-paani’ due to mining activities. Many people were forced to leave their land. Those left behind were exposed to severe diseases and complications. As a result, much more deliberations are required with various stakeholders for creating a conducive policy framework. Thus, it is vital that a balance is struck between societal expectations, environmental preservation and economic growth.

Q5. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has spoken about phasing out coal for climate change concerns. Do you think Jharkhand can transition to solar and wind energy from coal? If yes, how long do you think this transition will take? If no, what are the alternatives?

Climate change related issues are increasing at an alarming rate. Due to the erratic changes in climatic conditions, it is mostly those at the margins who are most affected. Therefore, switching to renewable energy resources becomes essential. My government is committed to exploring alternate energy resources, especially solar energy for both electrification, saving unforeseen costs of conventional sources and also for facilitating micro irrigation to farmers and farmers collectives.

Q6. A new concept called Just Transition in coal mining areas has been emerging. The basic idea is that local communities in coal mining areas/ coal districts should not become the victims of coal phase-out in the next 20/30 years as the IPCC report says. Therefore, it says that economic opportunities should be created for mining dependent communities in these areas. Given this, is the Jharkhand government open to developing a Just Transition plan in coal mining areas? If yes, what should be the major components of the just transition plan?

I have not heard much about the Just Transition concept. But my government welcomes any concept that provides equity to people and other stakeholders affected from coal mining, directly or indirectly in districts and zones affected by mining. 

Q7. A key component for transition towards a non-coal economy will be diversification of economic opportunities. What are some of the economic sectors in the state with growth opportunities that can substitute for the revenue and employment that the coal industry currently provides?

Jharkhand is rich in minerals. But it has also been endowed with rich and diversified natural resources across the state. Tourism is one of the sectors which has been left untapped until now. We have so many states in India which generate revenue by focusing solely on Tourism. Not only does it create revenue but also promotes conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Although post COVID 19 recovery will take time, we are focused to create a nature-based tourism plan to attract citizens across the country towards natural beauty and alternative indigenous living practices, prevalent in the state. 

The other is NTFP (Non-Timber Forest Produce) based economy in Jharkhand. The NTFP based economy has never been given due attention until now. My government is working on strengthening the overall structure of NTFP based backward and forward linkages. I believe that with due policy in place – not only the tribals and forest dwellers will get a decent income but it will also accentuate sustainable use of natural resources. Jharkhand also has great potential for renewable energy, pharmaceuticals, textile and other rural based industrialization initiatives. We are also going to soon start a process to map out specific enterprises/ industrial units that could be promoted/ developed to boost our rural economy and economic resilience. 

Q8. Which social security measures should the government prioritize to facilitate a well-planned transition? What can be the main revenue sources for it?

We have been committed to ensure social inclusion in all our programmes in this brief 6 month period. We will also soon launch the Urban Wage Guarantee Initiative, a first in its country and want to understand how a safety net for intra-state workers could be created in urban and peri-urban areas through state commissioned public works. Jharkhand is blessed with an industrious labour force. Our government prioritizes keeping welfare and pride of the labour force and other people intact. Keeping this as our priority, we promoted direct engagement with the Border Roads Organization (BRO) when they had approached Jharkhand for labour force. Our government is working on developing a plan and policy measure to ensure the rights and welfare of the people of Jharkhand especially towards responsible business practices and establishing an aspirational and responsible migration pattern in the future, contrary to the distress migration that has been practiced. 

Q9. What is your opinion about the political momentum / or support for transiting to non-coal economy in the mining districts? How do you think a favorable political will can be built?

Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) has always fought for the rights of people of Jharkhand. We always support less extractive and more equitable platform for our state. Our coalition government and JMM welcome any opportunity to promote equitable opportunities for both industries and people.  

Q10. What do you think that can be done to build a multi-stakeholder consensus and engagement for a transition?

Multi-stakeholder consensus cannot be attained unless there is democratisation of processes. We have the political will to do that and will deliberate more once the larger socio-economic picture is clearer. We also need time – I spent 4 months tackling COVID-19 and it has been a learning time. There are several plans but definitely they will be laid in the times to come.

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This article originally appeared on Civil Society.

It is not common to find a hard-nosed environmentalist with a fan following in the boardrooms of corporations. Chandra Bhushan is one such.

As the leader of the Green Rating Project at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), Bhushan held an unwavering mirror to the standards of industries such as paper, cement, automobiles and mining.

Company after company was persuaded to improve technologies and processes. A space was created for engagement with senior management, which learnt to abandon stealth for a willingness to talk openly about where their factories were falling short.

Bhushan has now set up iFOREST or the International Forum for Environment Sustainability and Technology. An engineer by training, he believes modern technologies and innovation can bring quantum improvements in the environment. Dr R.A. Mashelkar heads the iFOREST board.

Bhushan was with CSE for 22 years. He was handpicked by the late Anil Agarwal and was a disciple who learnt from him how to be combative and collaborative at the same time. After Agarwal died, Bhushan worked closely with Sunita Narain on several impactful campaigns. He led many of CSE’s research programmes. 

We spoke to Bhushan on his plans for iFOREST and how he sees the path ahead through the maze of India’s environmental problems.

You are leaving CSE after 22 years. After having worked closely on so many frontline issues what will you be doing now?

I had a wonderful journey at CSE. As an institution we achieved many milestones especially at a time when environmentalism in India was at a very nascent stage and people didn’t have information. That’s when Anil (Agarwal) came in with the State of India’s Environment report, Down to Earth began as an environmental magazine and research teams were set up at CSE. Some basic environment laws and regulations were put in place. CSE was at the right place at the right time, poised to become one of the leaders of the environment movement in India.

Today the language of environment has been mainstreamed. Everyone talks of environmentalism and every government has a paper on the environment. The challenge is how do you scale up implementation.

I have been thinking about this for quite some time. The era of top-down policy is over. The question is, how do you convert policy into a scaled-up model for implementation?

That is the real challenge the country faces today and that is what motivated me to embark on my next journey where I could look at policy design and, more importantly, at innovation. I think we are in an era where technology is available for large-scale innovation and scaled-up work in the field of environment.

So, policy design, innovation and scaled-up implementation — these are the three core pillars we will be building on.

You have worked closely and fruitfully with industry. Based on this kind of experience what are the areas you would focus on?

Absolutely. I was fortunate perhaps to lead the only programme in the environmental movement in India which engaged fruitfully with industry on the same platform, at the same level. When I was releasing the Green Rating report on the cement industry I was speaking to industry leaders and Anupam Mishraji was sitting in the front. Post the report’s release he came up to me, took my hand and said, ‘This is Gandhism at its best’. 

At that time I didn’t understand what he meant. Later, I realised he was essentially saying that speaking truth to power is what Gandhi did. The Green Rating project did exactly that.

We spoke truth to the most powerful industrialists in India. Initially, they were resistant. But once they understood the unbiased nature of the rating and the foundation of goodwill it had for industry and the environment, they all came out to support us — from Gautam Thapar to Harsh Pati Singhania to Yogi Deveshwar…

In fact, Deveshwar was a big fan of the Green Rating project. Recently, after his passing away, I met some of his colleagues from ITC. They narrated a story which really warmed my heart.

In our first paper industry rating we had given the worst rating to ITC. Deveshwar called a board meeting in which he said, Who the hell is this Chandra Bhushan who says we are the worst paper plant in India. The next time he rates us, make sure we are the best. And that is exactly what happened. Four years later, when I rated ITC again, the company had the best paper plant in India.

This tells me that without engagement with industry and businesses you cannot improve environment in India. Environment cannot be solved by government alone. In fact, I always say environment is too important to be left to the government. We need industry engagement, financial sector engagement and public participation. Only then will we be able to resolve environmental issues.

One of the pillars of our work will be green economics. How do we green, not only industry, but the financial sector so that there is market support for the environmentalism that we want.

To take it to spaces where strife happens?

I would say to take it to uncomfortable spaces for environmentalists like me.

Like?

See, one of the problems in the environment movement is that we do not know how to engage with businesses. It’s very easy for other environmentalists to accuse you of being on the side of business even if you are engaging at the same level, even if there is no financial transaction. So it’s a very uncomfortable space to be in.

But the Green Rating project taught me that the way to navigate that uncomfortable space is to be open and transparent. So for the Green Rating project, every letter I wrote to industry or received from industry, every report that we published, I would get put up on the website. Then there was no scope for any kind of negative publicity to happen.

When you talk of NGOs and activists being adversarial for a long time, actually industry, even now to some extent, is adversarial in its own way. Despite that, in 22 years you have seen a change.

Absolutely. I have seen change. I have seen a time when no industry had an environment policy, when in the corporate boardroom, environment was not discussed. Today, every industry I go to has a subcommittee on environment and sustainability.

That’s a big change.

It is. People are discussing environment in their boardrooms which is a tremendous change. That discussion has to also become more real and more implementable. I am quite hopeful in an era of climate change, industry is realising that their businesses are at stake. One episode of extreme weather can wipe out a plant. Think about what happened in Pune, Patna and other cities. There were plants that were wiped out. So I think industry is realising that climate change and other environment issues are a threat to business.

Will climate change be one of the key areas you will be taking up?

Yes. We will be very engaged in the climate change movement because the solutions to climate change are going to be extremely challenging. We have to change the energy system.

But that’s a big issue.

Actually, changing the energy system is the easy part. We have the technology. We have wind and solar and we already live in a battery world. I mean, can you live without your mobile and laptop? So we are living in a battery world except that it has to be enlarged. The question is: how do you produce steel and cement? How do you produce food? How do you transform the transportation sector and the aviation sector? These are the big challenges we face and these are also core industries.

So what will you be working on, initially?

We have decided to work on four pillars in an integrated way. The first is livable and sustainable cities. Globally, more people live in cities already. I’m quite sure that when the 2020 census results come in 2022, you will find 40 to 50 percent of India’s population living in cities. So cities are going to define the sustainability of the nation. Not rural areas. 

The second pillar, which I am very excited about, is an integrated programme on agriculture, land, forests and water. See, most environmental problems focus only on land management. Everything is about land. We will discuss climate change adaptation and other issues.

The third is energy and climate change. We will be discussing transition. It is an irony that climate change will lead to huge transfer of wealth. The poorest part of India is where the coal is and the richest part of India is where renewable energy is located. If you close down coal mines, what happens to the Jharkhands and Jharias? They are polluted, it is true, but there is economic activity happening there. How do you make the transition from coal to renewables without disrupting livelihoods in poor regions?  

What do we do about coal?

I think we have 30 years to close down coal. Whenever someone says close down coal I give them a perspective. I tell them to think about 30 years ago. We had floppy discs, then. Today, we have more computing power than Apollo 11 in our hands. Thirty years is a long time for the world to change. There is also pressure for change to happen.

My sense is you have to build an alternative economy and industries in those areas. Coal will not end because we have renewable technology. Coal will end if there is political support and grassroots support to say, yes, we are now ready to transition from coal.

The fourth area is green economics where we will work very closely with the financial sector and industry.

In terms of coal, and this is so important to the nation, what do we do in the interim? Obviously, it makes sense to use our coal but at the same time you live in a warming world.

It isn’t just about India closing coal. It’s about the world moving away from coal. What should be the principle on which this should happen? And the principle I have arrived at is based on depreciation. If a plant has depreciated — covered its capital, interest, benefits… then it should be closed down.

If you draw a map of the world and place all the coal plants according to depreciation, you will find the oldest plants, whose average age is 40 years, are in the US. So it is immediately possible to start closing down US plants. There is Europe which also has old plants. If we use this principle then India should perhaps start closing its plants from 2030 and complete this process by 2050.

But during this interim period what should we do?

I think we should promote clean coal, high-efficiency utilisation of coal, reduce our T&D losses — we lose 30 percent of our electricity — and improve energy efficiency so for every unit of coal we get more economic and social output. This is what the roadmap should be and we have 30 years for this transition to take place.

Who do you think will fund iFOREST?

It will remain a publicly funded organisation. I do not see the colour of money.  I see its quality. So even if it is less money it should allow you to do good work. We need money with patience. Right now the money that comes to the NGO sector doesn’t have patience. The funders want a report the very next month. In this field, if you want to do good work you need money with quality and patience. My board is very keen that we raise as much Indian money as possible. 

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