By Ashish Joshi
Beijing and New Delhi, the two of the most important capitals of Asia, have both been regularly in news for severe levels of air pollution and are often covered under thick layers of smog with an atmosphere that almost all studies regard too hazardous to breathe in.
On 9th November, PM 2.5, which is a scale to measure the concentration of cancer causing particulate matter which gets absorbed deep into lungs, rose to an alarming level of 999 micrograms per cubic meter in Delhi. As per the World Health Organization, concentration above 300 is considered hazardous and unfit for breathing. Current situation in Delhi is very similar to Beijing?s airpocalypse of 2013 when PM 2.5 levelscrossed the 800 mark, accounting for city?s most polluted day since 2008.
As per a 2015 report from the University of British Columbia in Canada, during the period of 2 years from 2013 to 2015 New Delhi only had 7 days of healthy air to breathe while Beijing had 58. Since then, Beijing has further improved its air quality a lot, a Netherlands based NGO Greenpeace has recorded an annual decrement of 15 percent in the concentration of PM2.5 and pollutants like NOx and SOx. New Delhi on the other hand has gone further down the hill, and therefore, a Beijing case study can most certainly offer valuable insights for New Delhi to learn from.
The two cities have a lot in common.
Both the capitals are densely populated economic powerhouses with a joint GDP standing wellin excess of $500 Billion.All this is built on the backbone of a strong industrial activity and the inter-state connectivity that both the cities offer. Be it industrial pollution, crop burning, or transportation, the majority of the sources of pollution in Delhi are external, just like in Beijing where the key sources of air pollutants are industries, thermal power plants and transportation. Numerous studies have found the two cities neck to neck as far as poor air quality is concerned, but what has separated the two so far is the response of the citizens as well as the government in tackling the crisis.
China?s authoritarian system makes policy changes a lot easier meanwhile in the complex Indian democratic system issues of immediate attention often become a political blame game. State Government of Delhi has blamed neighboring states of Punjab and Haryana for stubble burning and construction dust while a BJP spokesperson blamed the Kejriwal Government for its failure to maintain a healthy working relationship with the ministers of nearby states.
Air pollution is no new problem for Delhi, while Delhi has been debating the issue for years Beijing and China declared war on pollution after the issue became a matter of unrest among people in 2013. China has used its cloud seeding technology very effectively to induce artificial rainfall to clean up the air, administration in Beijing has successfully removed 3.4 lakh vehicles older that 10 years cutting down on 40000 tonnes of pollutants, India not only lacks a policy for removal of ageing vehicles but has also failed to impose a long-proposed ban on vehicles running on diesel engines. Addressing the issue head on, China has significantly reduced its coal consumption by shifting towards non-fossil sources to meet its electricity needs. Since 2013, strict regulations have been imposed on the industries to regulate their SOx and NOx emissions which has brought a dramatic decrement in regional level emissions of hazardous compounds. Installations for monitoring air quality have been increased and government now issues regular warnings to people when the quality of air degrades too much.
The union environment ministry has developed a Graded Response Action Plan to tackle the issue of air pollution in Delhi. If PM2.5 level cross 100 micrograms per cubic meters, mechanized sweeping, sprinkling water on roads, strict ban on firecrackers, and a smooth traffic flow has to be ensured. At levels above 300, parking costs for private vehicles will be raised, odd even rule for private vehicles will be imposed, entry of trucks in the city will be stopped and the Badarpur power plant would be shut down. The government does claim that adoption of this strategy has reduced the air pollution levels in 2017 from that in 2016 but the biggest flaw with this approach is that it primarily focuses on the adaptations within the city and gives no important on the regions outside, which according to a IIT Mumbai study contributes for more than two thirds of Delhi?s air pollutants. The current plan as it name suggest is a response action plan and not a long-term solution to the existing problem.
Addressing the problem regionally remains the key.
India needs to learn from Beijing and formulate a policy the focuses on the region and not on the city merely. Policy makers from the nearby states of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan need to work in coordination with their counterparts in Delhi to tackle the situation.
?Our greatest hope is that India will not waste a decade trying to address a regional problem locally … but will move much faster to put in place regional action plans for cleaner energy sources and fuels, as well as meaningful emission standards and enforcement.?
– Lauri Myllvitra, Greenpeace?s global campaigner on coal.
What India needs is strong rules against industrial emissions for the factories present in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. Strict rules against stubble burnings and strict laws regulating emissions from vehicles. Delhi adds almost 1400 private vehicles to its roads every day. Mechanism of monitoring and retiring vehicles must be put in place.
Delhi also needs improved techniques to monitor the quality of air regularly and a mechanism that gives live status and warnings to people when the pollution levels get way too high. Most importantly, it?s the people of Delhi that need to demand a better quality of life from its government and consider it a responsibility of their own to abide to a lifestyle that improves the worsening situation.
