Representational image. | Shailesh Andrade/ Reuters India’s environment ministry has come out with a set of rules which facilitates any industrial project that starts in an ecologically sensitive coastal zone without required permissions, to compensate by paying for a conservation and environmental management plan, and avoid the risk of closure. On February 19, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change sent an “office memorandum” to all coastal states detailing the procedure for dealing with violations by industries starting projects without obtaining a valid Coastal Regulation Zone clearance. The ministry’s order held that for “protecting and improving the quality of the coastal environment and abating the coastal environmental pollution, it is necessary that all entities not complying with Coastal Regulation Zone notification be brought under compliance of the environmental statutes in an expedient manner”.