Introduction:
In recent years, the Government of Pakistan has taken
various concrete steps to attain control over industrial pollution in the
country. The most significant measure was the enactment of the Pakistan
Environmental Protection Act 1997, which makes it incumbent upon industrial
facilities to restrict their air emissions and effluents to the limits
specified in the National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS). The Act
also outlines
institutional framework for administering its laws: it institutes one
federal and four provincial Environmental Protection Agencies (EPAs) to
formulate NEQS and devise systems and procedures required to determine
whether industries comply with them.
Unless the EPAs elicit the industrial sector’s participation, the second
task isn’t small or easy. It requires the EPAs to measure, analyze and
report the environmental performance of every industrial facility in the
country, against no less than 48 environmental parameters-32 for liquid
effluents and 16 for air emissions, which are in the NEQS.
Clearly, this approach would not be feasible, for one thing, it costs far
more than the EPAs, with their limited resources, could ever afford.
Secondly, it fails to involve industries in the monitoring and evaluation of
environmental performance, which will retard the development of their own
capacity to identify pollution control measures. Left out in the cold,
industries are likely to cooperate less with EPA inspectors and consider
environmental monitoring more a hindrance than an opportunity to discover
new roads to cost effectiveness.
Perceiving the need for a more feasible approach, the Pakistan Environmental
Protection Council constituted an Environmental Standards Committee in 1996
to devise realistic modalities for NEQS enforcement and simplified
monitoring procedures. The Committee was chaired by Mr. Shamsh Kasim Lakha,
President of the Aga Khan University, and included representatives of
industrial interest groups, non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) and other stakeholders. An Expert Advisory Committee was also
appointed to address technical issues related to the NEQS and environmental
mentoring and reporting procedures. Working in close collaboration with
various industries, NGOs and research organizations, the Committee completed
its work in August 1998. One of the important products of its efforts is the
“Self-Monitoring and Reporting System for Industry”, which will be
implemented by the EPAs in collaboration with the industry and other
stakeholders.
Objectives of the Self-Monitoring Programme
The Self-Monitoring and Reporting System will make the
country’s industry owners and operators responsible for systematic
monitoring and reporting of their environmental performance. By implementing
this system, the government will, in fact, transfer the responsibility for
examining and evaluating industry’s environmental performance to individual
industrial facilities. Apart from saving EPAs considerable expense, time and
effort, this measure will enable industry to make long-term provisions for
eco-friendly production. The reported data will also enable government
agencies to assist industrial units in controlling their pollution levels.
The Self-Monitoring and Reporting System
The system proposed by the Environmental Standards
Committee takes into account the resources and interests of both EPAs and
industries. It classifies industry into three categories A, B and C each
corresponding to a specified reporting frequency. Category A industry will
report their emission levels after every month, category B industry
quarterly and category C industry biannually. Industrial units will get
their effluent tested from a laboratory and enter the results in the
electronic forms (software SMART – Self-Monitoring and Reporting Tool,
provided with this package). The data so entered could be sent to respective
Environmental Protection Agency via email or through floppy.
Email and postal addresses of EPAs are given in this package. Sampling and
analysis requirements and procedures, and the reporting format are also
prescribed. Instruction Manual of software has been written in a simplified
language, which assist operator on installation and usage of the software.
Under the Self-Monitoring and Reporting System, industries in Pakistan will
be responsible for systematically monitoring their environmental performance
and reporting the data to Environmental Protection Agencies.
As Industry owners prepare to meet their new obligations, some important
questions are bound to arise, for instance, Are all industries to monitor
their pollution? Have the EPAs defined any procedures for sampling? Whose
analysis results will be acceptable to the EPAs? Which laboratory facilities
should be used for the samples analysis? Clearly, before the system can
start functioning, industry owners need to be informed of
the specific rules, method and procedures they are to observe under the
Self-Monitoring and Reporting System. The aim of this package is to provide
this information to industry owners so they can respond effectively to their
new obligations.
