Using terms like “green,” “sustainable,” or “eco-friendly” without clear references or evidence can be misleading, as also overstating achievements, downplaying negative impacts, or using vague and unclear semantic to create a deceptive impression of sustainability.
Likewise, Governments are misleading claims (focusing on positive outcomes while ignoring/ downplaying the negative ones), encompassing a lack of transparency of data and schemes used to assess environmental performance, creating a false sense of progress and hindering genuine efforts to tackle the environmental challenges we are facing and avoiding to hold governors accountable for their environmental (mis)commitments.
Green washing it’s commonly achieved through the promotion of unsustainable practices, using misleading metrics, focusing on symbolic actions (planting trees or launching drives without addressing the core grounds of environmental problems).
It’s why, we citizens, we need robust regulation to prevent greenwashing, ensuring monitoring of the government environmental performance by independent bodies, reporting misleading claims, exposing their liability, and raising public awareness about greenwashing, empowering citizens to identify and confront such misleading claims.
The Indian government has recently introduced guidelines to curb greenwashing but just on the consumer sector. They were issued by the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA), to ensure transparency and accuracy in environmental marketing claims. Companies must substantiate their eco-friendly assertions with verifiable evidence and avoid vague or unsubstantiated claims. Violations can lead to penalties, including fines and potential imprisonment.
But the same is urgent for all environment actors not only corporations, since politicians and bureaucrats use the same kind of claims when promoting their “products or services” in a range of ways.
Though the term “greenwashing” is often used to describe the practice of companies misleading consumers about the environmental benefits of their products or practices, the same occurs in the political ground, known as “political washing”, where governments and political parties overstate or feign their commitment to sustainability and to environment. In the context of Indian politics, this issue has become increasingly relevant as sustainability became a motto in political discourse, being facilitated by a lack of accountability.
And so, “greenwashing politics” became a well-recognized practice of governments and political bodies using environmental rhetoric and emblematic actions to appear environmentally cognizant, while lacking authentic commitment to their environmental duties – making grand proclamations about environmental protection while pursuing actions that contradict their claims, or prioritizing economic growth over environmental concerns.
Basically, there is a discrepancy between rhetoric and action (often promoting ambitious environmental targets/initiatives failing to implement needful policies or enforce the existing rules), there is a focus on figurative gestures well displayed by the press, there is also the influence of vested interests prioritizing short-term economic gains over long-term environmental sustainability.
While the Indian government hasn’t been directly indicted of greenwashing as some corporations were, there are many cases where government initiatives can be understood as such.
Forest Conservation, planting trees without accurate planning or maintenance, without addressing deforestation caused by the approval of large-scale industrial projects, digs a gap between policy promises (Green India Mission, e.g.) and on-ground realities.
Plastic Waste Management, without addressing the onset of plastic production and its EPR, with rhetoric focused on SUPs, consistently violated by State governors themselves.
And several other examples could be added. However, only addressing the gaps between promises and actions, only fostering transparency and accountability, only ensuring the active participation of all stakeholders, can we move beyond political washing. And reinstate the erosion of public trust not only by the deferred action on the environmental current glitches as also by the noticeable gap between political rhetoric and factual outcomes.
Thus, to counteract political greenwashing we, citizens, we must
- survey the strict implementation & enforcement the environmental laws, deterring governors from crafting misleading claims about their environmental goals & practices, prioritizing flawless durable sustainability over ephemeral economic growth
- claim transparency & accountability of those responsible for environmental damages, engaging stout specialists in the decision-making processes, fostering public participation of all stakeholders, raising sharp public awareness about the hazards of greenwashing
