Even though the Environmental Protection Act came into force eight years ago, in 1997, it has remained virtually ineffective due mainly to the lacunae in the law under which environmental tribunals function.
Currently, the Lahore High Court is hearing a writ petition that has challenged the vires of the law, seeking regulation of the tribunals under the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr.PC) rather than Civil Procedure Code (CPC), arguing that no convictions are possible without the application of Cr.PC.
During the course of its hearing, the court remarked that it would resolve the question whether the tribunals are to be regulated under the Cr.PC or the CPC. The case has only highlighted the fact that we are not taking the needed steps to protect our environment from the threat it faces from different polluters, especially the industrial sector.
As it is, the corporate sector indeed needs to abide by relevant environmental standards both by way of social responsibility and to meet ISO 14001 requirements, under which all the export-oriented industries must adopt environment-friendly practices and technologies.
Most of those who defy the Environmental Protection Law are industries that cater for the local markets. Their transgressions are partly the outcome of lack of awareness, which fact places a special responsibility on the concerned government departments to ensure that all those engaged in production activity likely to generate hazardous emissions have the necessary safe waste disposal arrangement.
However, the fact remains that the main culprit is the weakness of the accountability system as noticed in the environmental tribunals, whose effectiveness is hampered by legal lacunae as well as paucity of resources.
While industrial activity is increasing at a fast pace, the tribunals, one for each province and one for the capital area, are unable to deal with the cases in an efficient manner. They have a lot of workload to cope with. For example, the average number of cases that come up before the Punjab tribunal every month is 25. And yet postponements are common, more often than not because of the presiding magistrate's position being vacant.
When the presiding officer is there, the two technical experts, to be appointed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are missing. Those familiar with the situation also point out that the EPA laboratories are not well-equipped to perform the necessary tests, and hence because of the agency's inability to furnish the essential evidence many cases remain pending for an indefinite period.
And the backlog keeps piling up. It is then plain that even when the court has sufficiently addressed the legal issues pertaining to the environmental tribunals, EPA's deficiencies with regard to provision of technical evidence will continue to adversely affect the tribunals' efficacy.
Needless to say, we can choose to neglect our environment but we shall do so at the peril of our collective good. It is about time the government took a fresh look at all these problems to determine the causes behind them, and to come up with requisite remedial action.