Environmental tribunals

Ineffectiveness of environmental tribunals should act as an eye-opener for the environment ministry as well as those who are responsible for making environmental policies and subsequent enforcement of them.
Experts in the environmental circles say that the government has miserably failed to come up to the aspirations of Karachiites as far as the working of a seven-year-old environmental tribunal in the city is concerned.
In 1999, the federal government, under section 20(1) of PEPA, 1997, established two environmental protection tribunals in the country, one having jurisdiction for Punjab, the NWFP and Islamabad capital area and the other for Sindh and Balochistan.
As a part of the procedure, a common citizen as an individual or a group can file a complaint with the provincial Environmental Protection Agency to report any threat to the environment. It may be remembered that the relevant articles of the Constitution of Pakistan dealing with the protection of environment are Articles 9, 14, 184(3), and 199(1)(c).
According to the report, at present, the posts of the tribunal's chairman, a member (legal) and registrar are lying vacant because of the reason as nominations are not available from the Sindh High Court and other authorities concerned.
Justice (Retd) Syed Abdur Rehman was appointed the first chairman of the Environmental Tribunal, who could only hold one staff meeting of the body in December 1999. Following a writ petition, the Lahore High Court on 6 July 2000 directed the Federal Government to appoint a new head of the tribunal and this appointment was made on 17 July 2000.
Subsequently, another chairman was appointed - a senior special judge - who held the tribunal's second meeting in October 2000. During the period in question, however, neither was any case referred to the Environmental Tribunal.
About one and a half-year back, the government appointed two persons from outside Karachi as members legal and technical separately, but the persons did not show up.
The tribunal's first registrar, appointed in 2001, had also been posted in the law ministry at Islamabad. The second full-time chairman of the Karachi tribunal, Nabi Bux Talpur, a district and sessions judge of Sanghar, left the post vacant after reaching superannuation in March this year.
It is suggested that procedures for approaching Environmental Tribunals should be made knows to the common persons by arranging seminars and short training courses. These may be sponsored by Sindh EPA in conjunction with NGOs.
Moreover, there is an urgent need to establish two more environmental tribunals for Azad Jammu the Kashmir and Northern Areas. Strict laws should be incorporated in the legislative framework for the Northern Areas regarding tree-cutting practice.
Under the prevalent regulatory system, there is not much scope for extensive environmental protection basically due to the fact that the environmental tribunal cannot take suo motu action and can take cognisance only on the complaint of either a federal or provincial agency or a private citizen.
Consequently, Environmental tribunal/Magistrate was unable to take suo motu action in cases like UK ship dismantling in which an asbestos-riddled British warship was dismantled at the Gadani shipyard in Balochistan and like that of KPT Port Fountain Jet Project which imply serious environmental concerns raised from stake holders.
Environmental tribunals should be authorised to take notice on offences like mangrove destruction in the Karachi coastal area. Workshops should be held to build a collective and shared vision amongst the public and private sectors regarding environmental laws and their relevance and implementation.
An environmental engineer/ environmentalist should be appointed as an adviser to environmental magistrates. Participation of NGOs to assist the ministry of environment to make the environmental tribunals effective and the formation of community groups will also be of help in this regard.