India should not finance Rampal plant

Environmental activists said India as a party of the World Heritage Convention has legal obligation not to finance the Rampal coal-fired power plant proposed to be set up 14 kilometres off the Sundarbans, a world heritage site in Bangladesh. 

Under the convention, Bangladesh is primarily responsible for protecting the world's largest mangrove forest situated within its territory, said the National Committee for Saving the Sundarbans (NCSS) in a legal briefing put up on its website yesterday.

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But India too should refrain from taking any step that would harm the forest, it said. 

Quoting the convention, the statement signed by NCSS Convenor Sultana Kamal says that India agreed “not to take any deliberate measures which might damage directly or indirectly the cultural and natural heritage…situated on the territory of other States Parties to this convention.”

India's deliberate measures to finance and operate the plant would, as the Unesco/IUCN experts concluded, damage the Sundarbans. For this reason, India should immediately cancel its plan to participate in the financing, construction, operation or management of the project, the NCSS said in the statement. 

An expert group from the Unesco's World Heritage Centre and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) thoroughly examined the proposal of the plant and how it would affect the Sundarbans.

Their findings released on October 18 included that the mechanisms proposed to collect and contain ash and to prevent its contact with water are poor and seem highly theoretical.

Regarding mercury contamination, experts said the control mechanism and technologies proposed for the plant are insufficient to prevent such contamination and don't conform to the international standards.

“The government of Bangladesh should immediately cancel all plans and approvals for the Rampal plant,” the NCSS said in the briefing.

The possible threats that the power plant poses to the world heritage site are not addressed adequately in the Environment Impact Assessment, and the plant will not be using the best available technology or the highest international standards for preventing damage, given that it will be located in the near vicinity of a globally unique world heritage property, according to the statement. 

In the statement, experts recommended that the Rampal plant be cancelled and relocated to a more suitable location where it would not have negative impact on the Sundarbans.