The Environment Act (No. 3 of 2024).

This Act, divided into eighteen Parts, and consisting of 151 sections, provides for a modern legislative framework that ensures better protection, management and conservation of the environment. The Act defines the following relevant terms: accredited laboratory, to provide environmental data and conduct analyses of environmental samples; Central Water Authority; circular economy; climate change; clinical waste; Commissioner for Environment; deposit, emission and leakage of waste; effluent; Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA); environmental effect; extended producer responsibility; hazardous waste; Integrated Coastal Zone Management Committee; multilateral environmental agreement; national environmental standards; discharge of oil into the environment; pesticide residue; pollutant substances; rock quarrying and its impact on the environment. Part II of the Act concerns the measures and actions for the formulation of National Policies and priorities for the protection of the environment, and provides for establishing a proper Commission, Departments, Committees and Agencies, and therefore defines the following powers and duties of the Commission: setting national objectives and targets regarding circular economy, green economy, protection of the environment, sustainable development; monitoring and reviewing the activities of public departments engaged in environmental protection.
Part III provides for the management of Environmental Sensitive Areas (ESA), through the establishment of the Environmental Sensitive Areas Committee, measures for the protection of these areas, the ban on dumping of waste and other pollutants, the restriction on land clearing, specific measures for declaring any ESA as State land or private land. Part IV regards environmental assessments and the establishment of specific committees, including the environmental impact assessment licence and approval, contents of an environmental impact assessment report. Part V covers oil pollution and environmental emergency, and provides for: drafting of an oil spill contingency plan; establishment of oil spill coordination committee; measures for risk reduction; mitigation measures and environmental cleaning; declaration of environmental emergency. Part VI specifies national environmental standards and guidelines, in respect of water quality, emissions, air and noise pollution, pesticide residues; the Part also concerns industrial environmental audit. Part VII concerns coastal and maritime zone management and provides for preventing marine pollution.
Further Parts concern: the establishment of a National Environment and Climate Change Fund and its objects; the environment protection fee, and the cases in which this fee is levied; the establishment of plastic management Committee, with measures for prevention, reduction and control of plastic pollution; enforcement measures; jurisdiction of the Tribunal on environmental matters; application of the Act to Rodrigues island; criminal provisions and fixed penalty offences; amendments of several Acts.