TN to give final touches to its ‘Green Policy’

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

Tamil Nadu government will be giving final touches to its green policy after eliciting suggestions from government departments, institutions, academic and research institutions besides experts and non-governmental organizations.

The meeting, which is expected to be held on Thursday, will focus on conservation of critical environmental resources, ensuring equitable access to environmental resources and quality for all sections besides ensuring judicious use of environmental resources to meet the aspirations of the present and future generations, sources said.

Sources said the policy would help achieve a delicate balance between environmental protection and development needs of the state.

The policy framework would focus on new and emerging interventions that include environmental tax reforms, green economy and green growth besides public private partnership in environment sector.

The framework will facilitate shift towards management of environment and natural resources using market based instruments besides facilitating move towards green economy, sources said.

The key thrust areas include air quality, which will focus on local pollution hotspots and status of current actions, water quality that will highlight domestic and industrial pollutants flow into water bodies and status of various interventions.

The policy is also expected to focus on pollution abatement in rivers, lakes and water bodies besides waste management like municipal solid waste and status of adhering to municipal solid waste 2000 rules besides biomedical waste, plastic waste and haszardous and electronic waste.

The focus will also be on coastal zone management which includes impact on coastal regulation zone of various economic activities besides progress on integrated coastal zone management.