Political action also reflects this winter bias. Most of the announcements on the fight against pollution usually occur during the period from October to January.
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It’s no wonder then that the impact of these announcements has been limited so far. In the absence of concerted efforts during the rest of the year, governments tend to resort to quick-fix measures, such as towers of smog in the winter months. The Delhi Cabinet assigned ₹20 crore for a tower of smog last month.
A ‘mini smog tower’ with a capital cost of ₹East Delhi Member of Parliament (MP) Gautam Gambhir installed 7 lakh in Lajpat Nagar in January, followed by two more towers of smog in other parts of the city.
The smog towers are perhaps an acknowledgment by politicians that something needs to be done, but they are unlikely to have any impact. They may work for confined spaces like power plants and subway tunnels, but are ineffective elsewhere.
If Delhi cleaned its open air through smog towers like the one at Lajpat Nagar, it would need 5 million such towers during winters, at an outlay of ₹3.5 trillion.
The other announcement last month by the central government to establish a Commission for the Management of Air Quality in the National Capital Region and Adjacent Areas is more promising. But much will depend on the collaboration between the states of this region and the center.
The new body will replace the Environmental Pollution Prevention and Control Authority (EPCA) that has existed for more than 20 years. Members of EPCA were Delhi government officials and Delhi-based civil society representatives. The new Commission would have representation from the central government, interested state governments, the scientific community, and civil society.
The mandate allows this commission to override the decisions of the central pollution control board, state pollution control boards and other statutory bodies at the state level.
Santosh Harish, a research center fellow at the Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, sees the commission as an effort in the right direction as it recognizes air pollution as a regional problem. But it is still strongly pushed by the central government, at least in terms of naming its members and allocating funds, he said.
More importantly, this regional authority will do little to address the air pollution problem of cities, towns and villages outside the Delhi-NCR region. In fact, there is a national program in place to tackle pollution in major cities, but experts remain skeptical of that program.
Under the National Clean Air Program (NCAP), the central government had approved clean air plans for more than 100 cities in 2019. The program aims to reduce pollution levels in these cities by 20-30% to 2024 (with 2017 as the Base Year). But there are serious doubts about the effectiveness of NCAP.
The Delhi-based Council for Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) and Urban Emissions conducted an analysis of the NCAP plans of 102 cities to find that there is no legal framework to review and update the plans. The plans also lack a clear delineation of responsibilities. 45% of activities planned under NCAP have more than one responsible agency. What’s everyone’s business often ends up being nobody’s business, and we might see something similar here.
The other major drawback of the urban planning approach is its limited scope. As approximately 30% of air pollution comes from sources outside the city, an air basin approach or regional coordination between cities and states is warranted, similar to what is being planned for Delhi-NCR.
Emissions from transportation tend to attract the most attention in most plans, followed by industrial emissions and dust. In fact, these are the main contributors to air pollution in most cities. However, the proportion of each source of pollution varies between cities, and most city plans ignore these local differences. Only a quarter of city plans had data on their local emission sources.
About three-quarters of the activities committed under the city’s plans are included in planning, monitoring, training and related activities. Less than 25% of the activities require action on the ground. Economic measures such as congestion pricing receive little attention in these plans. The planned investments in the construction of physical infrastructure, such as the installation of pollution monitors, also remain limited.
The unbalanced pattern of plans could be due to limited budget allocations as well as limited planning capacities at the local level. The central government approved these plans with an initial budget of INR 300 crore for 2019-20, but this amount is too small for the financial requirements of all cities. For example, only Dimapur would need ₹90 crore for his three-year plan.
India’s fight against air pollution needs a much greater focus and a year-long commitment than we see today. There is no shortage of global examples, even among emerging economies.
In the 1980s, Mexico City was known as the most polluted city in the world. Last year, the annual average of PM2.5 it recorded was 21 µg / m³ against 99 µg / m³ in Delhi.
“The improvement in air quality in Mexico City is the result of a coordinated effort by the federal government and local authorities, with a drastic change that began in 1992-93 and continues until the early 2000s,” he said. Beatriz Cárdenas, director of air quality for World Resources. Institute, Mexico The reduction in pollution has been more gradual since then.
The city took some tough steps, Cárdenas said. It closed a refinery within the city that used to be a major polluter. Several polluting industries were eliminated, leading to a change in the land use pattern within the city. The average age of the city’s vehicle fleet has declined and many former industrial areas of the city have been converted into residential and commercial zones, said Cárdenas, who also headed Mexico City’s air quality management office during 2017-18.
After Mexico City, Beijing began to attract worldwide attention and notoriety for its high level of pollution, but it has also made progress in reducing pollution in recent years. Beijing implemented a Clean Air Action Plan in 2013 and reduced average PM2.5 concentration levels by 35% in four years. The main reductions came from the closure of power plants and coal fired boilers, the transition to clean energy in residential spaces, and the phasing out of polluting industrial outlets. More than a fifth of the decrease in the city’s PM2.5 concentration was due to reduced emissions in the surrounding areas.
In recent years, Delhi and other cities in India have achieved worldwide notoriety for their extraordinarily high levels of pollution. Can they turn this shame into fame and emerge as the next global example?
This is the final part of a two-part series on India’s pollution problem.
the The first part examined the causes of pollution in Delhi and other cities in India. and its human cost.
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