27 June 2012, New Delhi – Air pollution is a
serious health issue, and according to the World Health Organization,
particulate matter alone kills 3.1 million people annually worldwide. This is
higher than the average number of people killed in traffic accidents annually.
“With the current trend of urbanization and
motorization, we need to empower cities towards a sustainable air quality
management program - with more stringent standards and more powerful pollution
control boards,” says Parthaa Bosu, CAI-Asia India
Representative. “People flock to cities and this trend worsens air pollution
posing great health risks to the population.”
About 340 million people in India live in
cities and by 2030 this is expected to reach 590 million. India’s
motorization index is currently about a tenth of developed regions like the US
and Europe but is climbing rapidly. Estimates have shown that Delhi is adding
300,000 cars a year. For India as a whole, research shows that the vehicle
population will more than double between 2005 and 2015, from 50 million to 125
million in 10 years. The resulting air pollutants and GHG emissions from these
vehicles contribute to the air pollution problem in most urban cities in India.
To advocate for better air quality for cities,
a series of workshops were conducted in the cities of Pune, Chennai, Indore,
Ahmedabad and Delhi. The sessions
covered all the components of integrated air quality management necessary to
analyse and manage the air pollution in the cities, including tools to develop
an emissions inventory and available management options to command and control
air pollution in the cities.
These workshops are part of the Air Quality
and Climate Change Program of the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities
(CAI-Asia). Supported by the Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation and in
partnership with UrbanEmissions.info, CAI-Asia moves the agenda of air quality
management forward by sharing the results from the
UrbanEmissions.info’s study - Urban AirPollution & Co-benefits Analysis in Six Indian Cities – Pune, Chennai,Indore, Ahmedabad, Surat, and Rajkot. The city workshops included
hands-on training for the SIM-air family of tools.
Dr. Sarath Guttikunda from UrbanEmissions.Info
states, “the program is not meant to advocate a model, but to spread the
concept of knowledge management for air quality management in the cities. This
is a much needed exercise, where the required information in scattered and we
need programs to collate that for an informed decision making.”
Mr. Rajesh Rangarajan, Senior Researcher from Institute
for Financial Management and Research, Chennai, India, quotes, “we are using
the results from the UrbanEmissions.info’s study in Chennai to advise the
Tamilnadu Pollution Control Board on the placement of new air quality
monitoring stations, based on the pollution hotspots and influencing emission
sources like the brick kilns and landfills”.
A
National Air Quality Management Workshop held in June 21 gathered members of
government, civil society, and private sector under the banner for better air
quality for cities. Showing their support for
the air quality advocacy, member secretaries - Shri J.S. Kamyotra and Naini
Jaiseelan noted the importance of air quality as a priority issue in India. Case
studies by representatives from Chennai, Indore, and Pimpri Chinchwad (new
Pune) were also presented.
In his keynote address, Shri J.S. Kamyotra, Member Secretary of the Central Pollution Control Board, highlighted the need for improving monitoring, emission inventories, dispersion modelling, and their application for action plans for cities. Together with research organizations in India, source apportionment studies were conducted by CPCB and MoEF for the period 2006 to 2010.
Air pollution is a change in the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of air that causes adverse effects on humans and other organisms.
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