Kerala State Environment Policy, 2009.

This Kerala State Environment Policy Vision aims at ensuring clean air, water, soil and food to the people of Kerala and its sustainability for a healthy living condition, as well as ensuring conservation of natural resources, including species, ecosystems and genetic wealth of the State. The State Government have been pursuing to implement several regulatory and promotional measures for environmental protection and conservation through their various departments such as Department of Environment, Science and Technology, Health and Family Welfare, Forests and Wildlife, Factories and Boilers, Industries, Mining and Geology and Groundwater. It aims at ensuring equitable access to natural resources to all sections of the society, particularly the poor, whose survival depends on the availability of natural resources, and to ensure the following issues: a sustainable and equitable use of environmental resources for meeting their basic needs of present as well as future generations; its efficient use by reducing their consumption per unit of economic output, to minimize adverse environmental impacts; mitigation and restoration activities for damages already caused to the environment and the ecosystems by suitable restoration/ameliorative measures and, to prevent and control further deterioration of land, biomass, water and air which constitute our basic life-support systems.
The Policy aims to create environmental awareness for all sections of the society, sensitizing all sections on the critical need for sustainability of the ecosystems and environment to meet the growing human development needs and, to promote public involvement in all environmental activities.
The State government is in the process of framing policies related to forests, water and agriculture. Even though all these policies forward strategies and action plans for sustainable development in their respective fields, there is, so far, no comprehensive policy dealing with environment. Hence, the present Environment Policy; intended, mainly, to mainstream environmental concerns in all development activities. The policy has been designed to suit the specific local conditions of the State of Kerala and to help re-orient its development in conformity with environmental perspectives so as to make the development sustainable, aiming to promulgate guidelines and policies for waste disposal, especially for those originating from industrial and municipal sources.
Its general approach aims to formulate appropriate legally binding environmental safeguards and protection measures in policies, planning, site selection, choice of technology and implementation of schemes in areas such as agriculture, water resource development, animal husbandry, fisheries, industries, mining and quarrying, mineral extraction and processing, energy, forestry, tourism, transportation and human settlements.
In addition, it applies the principles of good governance (transparency, rationality, accountability, reduction in time and costs, participation, and regulatory independence) to the management and regulation of use of environmental resources.