Time has come to supervise various pollution control boards: NHRC chief

New Delhi, Mar 23 (PTI) NHRC chairperson justice (retd) Arun Kumar Mishra on Wednesday expressed serious concern over climate and environment degradation impacting human rights, even as he said that time has come to supervise supervisory bodies like various pollution control boards.

He said this while chairing a meeting of the commission's first Core Advisory Group on Environment, Climate Change and Human Rights here, the rights panel said in a statement.

Efforts and funds pumped in to clean the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers, without yielding the desired results, are the two most visible and glaring examples of our collective failure to keep our environment clean and pollution-free, he was quoted as saying in the statement.

Mishra said human beings have not spared even the Mt Everest, which also requires to be cleaned now.

Mindless mining is going on so much that even Antarctica has not been spared. Development without following norms is not sensible, the NHRC chief lamented.

He also expressed concern over a recent estimate, according to which, of all the polluted cities in the world, a large number are from India.

Delhi was found to be the most polluted capital in the world for the fourth consecutive year in 2021 and 35 of the 50 cities with the worst air quality were in India, according to World Air Quality Report 2021, prepared by Swiss organisation IQAir and released globally on Tuesday.

In 2021, none of the cities in India met the prescribed World Health Organization air quality standards of 5 micrograms per cubic metre, stated the report.

As part of the global fraternity, we all as individuals have to take up the responsibility to protect and save planet earth from environment degradation to ensure that it doesn't lead to massive climate change impacting lives and ecological imbalances, Mishra said.

“Time has come to act or perish," he added.

Mishra expressed serious concern over climate and environment degradation impacting human rights.

Despite the enabling laws and rules, the ground situation is not changing for good much due to ineffective implementation of regulatory measures to check various environmental pollution, which may be impacting climate change and thus the lives of the people.

Time has come to supervise the supervisory bodies like various pollution control boards, he was quoted as saying in the statement.

He also questioned how would the society achieve the Sustainable Developmental Goals without fixing the problems related to the environmental hazards, agricultural practices, industrial and domestic waste management, among other issues.

Earlier, highlighting the significance of the meeting of the core advisory group, NHRC Secretary General Bimbadhar Pradhan said that there is no doubt that climate change is real and its effects are disastrous.

He said environment degradation is leading to climate change resulting in forced migration of people causing miseries, which need to be given a serious thought to shape up the enabling policies through deliberations.

A gamut of issues concerning environment, clean air and water pollution were discussed as part of the four specific agenda points of discussion, including gaps in implementation and monitoring of laws, judgments and schemes/initiatives concerning environment, climate change and human rights.

Best practices in environment management in India and abroad and replication thereof; empowering the local government and authorities to tackle environmental issues, and protecting the population, especially vulnerable sections from the impacts of climate change were other agenda points, according to the statement.

Besides the discussions and the presentations in the meeting, the NHRC chairperson asked the participants to send their specific suggestions, identifying the gaps in the laws, rules, regulations and implementation thereof to chalk out recommendations for the way forward to protect environment and check climate change, the statement said. PTI KND RHL