Third-party environmental auditing
High levels of industrial pollution are a harmful byproduct of growth. The Indian state of Gujarat is an industrial powerhouse with about 5 percent of the Indian population, but 9 percent of India's registered manufacturing employment and 19 percent of output (Authors' calculation, Annual Survey of Industries, 2004-05). This growth has been accompanied by a degradation of air and water quality. Yet, holding plants accountable for pollution is difficult when the quality of information on emissions is unreliable and regulatory capacity strained. The High Court of Gujarat introduced an environmental audit system for the state but this system, too, has been viewed as functioning poorly. The regulator, the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB), does not trust the information from this system enough to found strong sanctions on audits. This study focuses on the response of polluting plants to the third-party audit reform described in “Improving Third-Party Audits and Regulatory Compliance in India”.
