NEW DELHI: Calling upon India to strengthen its multi-stakeholder partnership and public participation in the environment sector, the World Bank has said environmental sustainability was the next greatest challenge, after population, in India's path to development.

According to a World Bank report `Strengthening Institutions for Sustainable Growth: Country Environmental Analysis for India' released here on Tuesday, there was a need to expand the regulatory mechanism to match the needs of the economy and successful global practice; and at the same time increase capacity and accountability of the environmental regulator to keep pace with growing mandates and demands.

The report says that owing to high population density, India's rapidly growing economy would put unprecedented pressure on its environment and natural resources such as land, water, air, soil and forests. These pressures are projected to become the highest in the world by 2020.

Pointing out that the country-wise average environmental compliance ratio of industries monitored was only 50 per cent, the report points out that these programmes did not cover many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which have a significant cumulative impact on the environment as a large number of these enterprises could not afford clean technology and pollution controls. The report highlights the urgent need to develop specialised environmental programmes for SMEs that take account of their constraints and help improve their environmental performance without adversely affecting their business. The report notes that despite India's efforts to develop alternative energy sources, coal will remain the dominant fuel for meeting the needs of its population and economy. The demand for coal will increase threefold in 20 years.

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