Union environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan said she wanted the 24x7 effluent monitoring of industries, which is already in place in Tamil Nadu, to be extended throughout the country.
Speaking at a conference on business ethics organised by Loyola Institute of Business Administration, she also called for self-regulation for private corporations to keep pollution in check and to publish their emission data on their websites.
The Union minister added that fines levied on companies for emission violations would be increased. A fine of `1 lakh is “very low, and that is completely unacceptable for someone who spoils the environment,” she said.
Criticising the West for ‘continuing to pollute the world and remain unapologetic’, the minister said it was developing countries like India that actually worked towards countering climate change.
Ms Natarajan also defended India’s stance at the global climate change meet at Durban. Referring to a Stockholm Institute’s study, which has found that it was in fact the developing countries, which were doing substantial work towards encountering climate change, she said equity was at the heart of any action on climate change and it was the developing countries’ (NX1 countries) obligation to counter the excessive damages they had done to the environment.
