Capacity Building Program for NGOs on Environmental Law and Policy (March 2005)

by

In continuation to our efforts to create awareness in the NGOs on environmental law and policy, a capacity building training course was organized from 20th March to 23rd March 2005 at New Delhi. NGOs working in the field of environment protection and related issues like solid waste management, bio medical and hazardous waste management, water conservation and management, rain water harvesting, alternate en  4ergy sources, Environment Impact Assessment, public hearing, wild life and animal rights, forest and bio-diversity etc were invited to participate in the training program. Representatives of Twenty Four NGOs from Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Uttaranchal, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Jammu & Kashmir and Nagaland participated in the program.

Eminent experts in the field of conservation, public interest law and policy were invited to speak and discuss environmental law, policy, guidelines, constitutional rights and duties for the protection of environment . To name Dr G D Agrawal, former Member Secretary, Central Pollution Control Board; Dr D. K. Biswas, former Chairman Central Pollution Control Board; Justice Chaturvedi, Addl. Session Judge, Shri N. S. Tiwana, Director, Department of State Council for Science and Technology, Punjab; Dr. S. K. Saxena, Senior Scientific Officer, Dr. I. M. Mishra, Head, Deptt. Of Chemical Engineering, IIT Roorkee; Dr. T. K. Joshi, Head, Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, Delhi; Dr A. Dey, Sr. Scientist, Central Ground Water Authority, Govt. of India; Shri S. K. Gupta (Director, Enviro-Tech); Dr. Amita Singh, (Associate Professor, University of Delhi) ; Mr M. C. Mehta, Ms. Seema Midha, Supreme Court lawyer, Sh. Biswajit Mukerji Senior Law Officer and some other experts addressed the participants with their rich knowledge and experience and had discussions at the end of every session with the participants. The objective of the capacity building programme was to—

  1. Familiarize the NGOs with the Environmental law and legal remedies available for the5 protection of environment in India;
  2. Equipping NGOs with the process and procedures for securing Environmental Justice;
  3. Providing information to NGOs about various forums, their powers, jurisdictions to enforce environmental law, Policy and Guidelines;

Provide an overview of public interest litigation (PIL) and to highlight a few landmark judgements/ orders delivered by the Supreme Court of India in Environmental matters and how these judgements and orders would be useful to them in pollution control, arresting of environmental degradation and promotion of the sustainable development