EMA — ‘a toothless bulldog’

THE Environmental Manage-ment Authority (EMA) is nothing but a “toothless bulldog” without the Environmental Commission of Trinidad and Tobago to give it the legal teeth to deal with offenders of the country’s environmental laws.

These were the views of the Environmental Com-mission chairman, Justice Zainool Hosein, in the Commission’s Report on its 2000-2003 activities which was laid in Parliament on Friday. The term of office of the Commission’s jud-ges ended last week and no steps have been taken to reappoint any new judges. In an article yesterday, EMA communications officer Neil Parsanlal said the EMA’s work would not be affected by the absence of an Environmental Commission, but attorney Rajendra Ramlogan argued otherwise.

In the report, Justice Hosein observed that for years there was no proper legal framework to address environmental problems although “legal provisions pertaining to the environment have existed for some time and are to be found in more than one hundred pieces of local legislation” and the Environmental Management Act (1995) “sought to introduce an orderly regime for the protection of the environment.” He said while the EMA was formed under this Act to coordinate the activities of various agencies to prevent “degradation of the national environment,” the EMA is impotent without “a specialised judicial body to which the decisions and actions of the Administrative Authority could be challenged on appeal.”

Hosein added that it was for this reason that the Commission was formed under the Environmental Man-agement Act (2000). The Commission is a Superior Court of Record and by virtue of the constitutional doctrine of Separation of Powers “is an arm of the State separate and apart from the Executive and Legis-lature.” Unlike other Superior Courts of Record in TT, the Commission’s conduit to the Cabinet is the Minister of Public Utilities and the Environment and not the Attorney-General. However in keeping with the separation of powers between the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary, the affairs of the Commission and the Ministry “do not intermingle and the Commission remains a separate and independent body free from Executive control.” Under the EMA Act 2000, decisions of the Commission can be dealt with in the Appeal Court “on a point of law” but the Commission “remains a separate entity from the Supreme Court of Judicature,” being a Supreme Court in its own right.

Since its inception, the Commission has been forging stronger links with the United Nations Development Prog-ramme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environmental Programme in order to develop regional environmental law. According to the report, Chief Justice Sat Sharma will host a meeting of the major players in Trinidad later this year, and that meeting will be funded mainly by the UNEP. In the 2002-2003 period, five actions were filed with the Commission and four of these have been concluded. The most notable of these was the October 2002 appeal by Canadian energy company, Talisman Inc, of an EMA decision to conduct seismic surveys in a section of the Nariva Swamp.

The report also suggests that failure to appoint a new Environmental Commission could cause several important pieces of environmental legislation to fall by the wayside. These include the Draft National Parks and Conservation of Wildlife Bill; Draft Planning and Development of Land Bill; Draft Beverage Containers Bill; Draft Water Pollution Rules; Draft Air Pollution Rules and the Draft Non-Hazardous Waste Rules. Among the key problems affecting the Commission are proper financing mechanisms and staffing inadequacies. The Report concluded that despite the numerous “teething” problems the Commission has encountered to date, the Commission “is able to deal competently and efficiently with matters falling within its jurisdiction and continues to prepare itself for a future where the public will make more vigorous use of the Court’s services.”