Against the advice of its own experts, the union ministry of environment has proposed easier environmental clearances for seaplanes and water aerodromes, seemingly at the insistence of the civil aviation ministry. Documents we obtained using India’s right-to-information law reveal how the environment ministry is succumbing to pressure.

New Delhi: A right-to-information query has revealed how the union environment ministry eased environmental requirements for upcoming water aerodrome projects for seaplanes, yielding to pressure from the civil aviation ministry and going against the recommendations of its own expert committees.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an enthusiast of seaplanes and water aerodromes, and ever since the launch in Gujarat of what his government claimed as India’s ‘first’ seaplane flight, the civil aviation ministry has put pressure on the environment ministry to downgrade environment-approval requirements for seaplane projects.

The downgrade was worked into a revised charter for environmental impact assessments (EIA)—a draft notification 2020 made public in March 2020 for comment and scrutiny, receiving numerous objections when it was.

The draft notification placed seaplanes and water aerodromes in a category called B2, projects that require a simple two-step process for environmental permission and do not require an EIA, instead of category A, which need rigorous vetting at multiple levels—local, state and central.

“Water aerodromes as category B2 projects means environmental assessment and audits will be bypassed,” Kanchi Kohli, legal researcher at the Centre for Policy Research, a think tank, told Article 14. “The decision revealed little weightage was given to the spirit of precautionary approach in prior environment impact assessments.”

Research and advocacy group Manthan Adhyayan Kendra used India’s transparency law, the Right to Information Act (RTI), 2005, to obtain documents that revealed the environment ministry’s own expert and appraisal committees had recommended for water aerodromes the same category A environmental clearances as for any other airport.

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