By Isha Tripathi, Omja Tiwari and Marwa Fathima K N
Every year the week in which the birthday of India's Bismarck Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (31st October) falls, is observed as 'Vigilance Awareness Week'. In a move towards commemorating the 75 years of the country's independence falling on 15th August 2022, it has been decided by the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) that this year the Vigilance Awareness Week would be observed from 26th October, 2021 to 1 November, 2021 with the theme 'Independent India @ 75: Self Reliance with Integrity ; स्वतंत्र भारत @ 75: सत्यनिष्ठा से आत्मनिर्भरता'.
The spirit behind the observation of this week is to create awareness in the public about the ill effects of corruption. Corruption has been a major obstacle in the country's political, social and economic progress. In the pursuit of the Government's vision of making 'New India' by 2022, the Central Vigilance Commission, an apex anti-corruption body of the country endeavours to promote transparency, integrity and accountability in public life.
Observance of the Vigilance Awareness Week is one of the tools of the Commission to bring together all the stakeholders to collectively engage in the prevention of corruption, fight against corruption and to raise awareness amongst the public regarding the existence, causes, gravity and menace of corruption. The fight against corruption can't be won without community participation. Thus, it is imperative to motivate the public to fight against corruption so that India succeeds in its goal towards achieving self-reliance with integrity.
In the light of the same, MH Vatavaran, The Environment Society of Miranda House presents a blog on 'Vigilance for a Safe Environment' to introduce you all to environment vigilance and environmental corruption.
ENVIRONMENT VIGILANCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL CORRUPTION Environment vigilance means to recognise dangers and forestall its impacts on the environment. Environmental corruption includes crimes ranging from illegal trade and logging, illegal dumping and transport of hazardous wastes, unreported fishing, etc. It causes serious threats to the environment, leading to poverty and food insecurity.
INTERPOL and UNEP have estimated that global natural resources worth at least $91 billion - $258 billion are stolen annually. Illicit trade in the forestry sector solely, is valued around $13 billion. Moreover, international illegal wildlife trade is the fourth largest illegal global trade after drugs, counterfeiting and human trafficking and is valued up to $23 billion annually. With the continuous increase in demand for natural resources, tackling corruption has become a matter of national and global security.
WILDLIFE - RELATED CORRUPTION AND ENVIRONMENT CONSERVATION Wildlife corruption involves the abuse of power for private gain, which facilitates illegal wildlife trade and distracts the protection of wildlife. Corrupt activities can take place at every stage in the illegal trade from the extraction of living or dead animals or plants or their derivatives as per need, through transportation, processing and export to the sale of the products and laundering of proceeds. The actors of corruption include politicians and public officials, members of the judiciary, law enforcement and military personnel, officials from forest and wildlife departments, customs officers, local elites and so on, which undermine attempts to apprehend and prosecute those involved. Corruption acts as one of the major obstacles to wildlife conservation and the management of the country’s natural resources. It may lead to the damage of biodiversity and ecosystem, extinction of some species or the eradication of acres of forests. It could also directly affect human lives as they damage water supply, food production and habitats.
via Traffic.org
The most common forms of corruption in the illegal wildlife trade are described under the given categories:
1. In situ failures to protect trade-restricted species
Failures by government, wildlife management or enforcement personnel to protect trade-restricted species may involve corruption. Accepting bribes for turning a blind eye, colluding or even carrying out illegal activities such as logging or poaching happens as a result. These failures reflect the lack of resources, personnel or training in the fields of wildlife protection and conservation. Agencies tasked with protecting wildlife might be limited with the capacity to patrol their territories effectively.
2. Failures to prevent transport and trade of trade-restricted species The illegally removed wildlife products are sold domestically or overseas in wildlife markets, retail outlets and online. An enormous amount of wildlife products are shipped and sold likewise each year, many of them go undetected. 3. Issuance of false documentation Falsifying documents including license, permits and other forms of documentation to collect, breed, transport and trade wildlife legally happens through fraud, favouritism, theft, forgery or bribery. False information might be entered into these documents or they may be falsified by altering identifying marks of animals and plants. 4. Failures to prosecute cases of wildlife crimes. Identifying corruption should be followed by the prosecution or penalization of individuals involved in the crime. The reasons why this do not happen often include lack of resources, lack of training to collect evidence, lack of interest in pursuing such crimes or corruption by officials. Strategies to end corruption in the wildlife trade must target each stage of the process.
It should include different aspects including enforcement of policy and legislation, monitoring co-operations in the involvement of trade, making personnel accountable for their actions, involving judiciary effectively, managing human resources efficiently, maintaining proper records and documents and spreading awareness related to the issue. The development of anti-corruption policies and laws which are clear, practical and possible and its smooth implementation by making them socially acceptable. Corruption should be criminalized, with severe punishments or establishments of penalties.
Increasing transparency of prosecutions for wildlife crimes, including publicly reporting judicial decisions and statistics on prosecutions, would improve the accountability of personnel.
There should be measures to report and complain about officials or ill practices happening, followed by investigations carried out by independent agencies.
Reward schemes and protection should be ensured to the officials who do their jobs right and apprehend the corrupt ones.
Well-considered hiring, training, promotion, management and remuneration strategies contribute to building a skilled, passionate and ethical workforce who are motivated and able to fight wildlife crime and corruption.
Ensuring regular and fair payment and raise in status of wildlife protection and enforcement personnel improves morale and empowers to resist bribes and other crimes.
Their training process should include awareness on legislation, procedures and methods relevant to their work, like identification of trade restricted species, and this training must be refreshed often.
Provide the person with adequate resources like equipment for patrolling, constant power supply, a computer system for storing, analyzing and generating data, etc. Having a code of conduct as well as ethical guidelines, with adequate ethics training helps them to identify and avoid conflicts of interest.
Unnecessary requirements or fees for license and permits may encourage corruption. Implementing Anti-Money Laundering (AML) measures by the state is necessary to prevent money laundering and ensure that financial institutions deter and detect instances of money laundering.
Awareness of corruption and other wildlife crimes and their harm should be raised among officials, other employees and the public. The media, CSOs, wildlife protection, customs and law enforcement agencies along with the public can call for reforms to wildlife law, anti-corruption law and the relation between the judiciary and the government, to ensure the reduction of corruption.
ECOLOGICAL LAWS
'Ecological Law' is an instrument to ensure and work on the climate and to control or forestall any demonstration or oversight contaminating or liable to harm the environment.
via Environmentalscience.org
In the Constitution of India, it is expressed that it is the obligation of the State to "ensure and work on the climate" . It forces an obligation on each resident " to secure and further develop the common habitat including timberlands, lakes, streams, and natural life".
Reference to the climate has additionally been made in the Mandate Standards of State Strategy (Part IV) just as the Principal Privileges (Part III). The Division of Environment was set up in India in 1980 to guarantee a sound environment for the country. This later turned into the Service of Environment and Forest in 1985. The essential worries of the Service are execution of approaches and projects identifying with preservation of the country's normal assets including its lakes, waterways, biodiversity, woodlands and untamed life, guaranteeing the government assistance of creatures, and the avoidance and decrease of contamination.
The Constitution of India in The 'Right to Life' contained in Article-21 of the Constitution of India incorporates the right to perfect human climate. It implies living in a perfect and sound climate.
Article-38 of our Constitution expects the State to guarantee a social request for the government assistance of individuals, which can be acquired by an unpolluted and clean climate in particular.
Article-48A of the Constitution requires the State to embrace the Protectionist strategy just as Improvinistic Strategy. Protectionist strategy forces restriction on those things which lead to ecological debasement, for example prohibition on utilization of leaded petroleum, restriction on utilization of plastic packs and so on Improvinistic strategy can be can be utilized for development of environment for example utilization of CNG or low sulfur fuel, tree ranch in modern regions and so on.
Article-51A of the Indian Constitution says: "It will be the obligation of each resident of India to ensure and further develop the regular habitat including woods, lakes, streams and natural life, and to have empathy for living animals."
The Water (Conservation and Control of Contamination) Act was instituted in 1974 to control water contamination, and for keeping up with or reestablishing the healthiness of water in the country. This is the first law passed whose goal was to guarantee that the homegrown and modern poisons are not released into waterways, and lakes without satisfactory treatment.
The Air Control of Contamination Act, 1981 was established to accommodate the anticipation, control and decrease of air contamination in India. It was the Bhopal Gas Misfortune which required the Public authority of India to order a complete ecological enactment, including rules relating , taking care of and utilization of unsafe waste. Based on these guidelines, the Indian Parliament instituted the Climate Assurance Act, 1986. This is an umbrella enactment that united the arrangements of the Water (Prevention and Control of Contamination) Demonstration of 1974 and the Air (Counteraction and Control of Pollution) Demonstration of 1981. The objective of the Climate Security Act is to ensure and further develop the environment in the country.
TRAFFIC TRAFFIC (Trade Record Analysis of Flora and Fauna In Commerce) is the leading non-governmental organization working globally on the trade of wild animals and plants in the context of both biodiversity and sustainable development. Its mission is to ensure that trade in wild plants and animals is not a threat to the conservation of nature.
via Traffic.org
TRAFFIC was founded in 1976 and it came to India in 1991. It is a strategic alliance with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). It works all around the world to carry out researches, investigations, analyses to compile the evidence used to catalyze action by governments, businesses and individuals to establish their mission. Its team connects across some of the world’s most critical wildlife trade hotspots to identify and help address both biodiversity conservation and sustainable development challenges and opportunities linked to trade in wild species. The goal of TRAFFIC is to “reduce the pressure of illegal and unsustainable trade on biodiversity, and enhance the benefits to wildlife conservation and human well-being that derive from trade at sustainable levels.” To achieve this goal TRAFFIC follows different approaches including working with national and international conventions, governments, enforcement agencies, private sector companies and consumers.
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