In its report to the Supreme Court on Thursday, the Environment Pollution Control Authority stated that the apex court’s order in October imposing steep taxes on trucks entering Delhi has led to a 19 per cent to 20 per cent reduction in commercial vehicles entering the city and a 35 per cent drop in the particulate matter emitted by trucks. While this is good news and shows that the Supreme Court’s initiative is producing results, the situation continues to be grim. According to the EPCA’s graph, at 300 microgrammes per cubic metre, PM2.5 (fine particulate matters two and one half microns or less in width) levels, continued to be in the “severe” category on a large number of days.

While the World Health Organisation’s identification of Delhi as the city with the most polluted air in the world must cause serious concern, particularly since it is the national capital, the situation throughout India remains alarming. The point needs to be remembered because Delhi’s pollution problem cannot be solved in isolation. According to a new study on the city’s air pollution by researchers led by a team of the University of Surrey, Britain, India’s capital suffers from a “toxic blend of geography, growth, poor energy sources and unfavourable weather that boosts its dangerously high levels of air pollution”.

The report holds that unlike coastal “megacities” like Mumbai, where relatively unpolluted sea breeze can replace polluted urban air, Delhi has limited scope for flushing polluted air out of the city. Other studies have also pointed out the contribution of Delhi’s location. Dust from the Rajasthan desert, not so far away, and the agricultural areas of Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh in times of low rainfall, add to the capital’s particulate matter content, as do emissions from factories and power plants around the capital. Curbing emission from vehicular traffic, therefore, will not help beyond a point. It will have to be a combination a regional approach as well as addressing the peculiar circumstances of Delhi such as the burning of dung, rubbish and leaves, the use of back-up generators which are switched on whenever there is a power cut, and emission from small-scale industries like brick kilns.

Implementing a regional approach will not be easy. Apart from the polluting agents mentioned above, burning of crop stubbles and wood and cow dung in open fires at home for cooking, contribute significantly. Making matters worse is Uttar Pradesh’s lax administration. Typically, according to the EPCA’s report to the Supreme Court, while 13 checkposts set up by the Haryana Government have led to the diversion of about 9,500 vehicles from Delhi everyday, Uttar Pradesh has yet to take adequate steps to this end.

Such laxity can hardly be countenanced. The consequences have been severe. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Suryatapa Bhattacharya starts with the shocking information that India and China together accounted for more than half of the 5.5 million deaths related to air pollution in 2013. It quotes researchers at the University of British Columbia, Canada, as putting down the number of such deaths at 1.4 million in India and 1.6 million in China.

According to another report by R Prasad in The Hindu of September 11, 2015, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, household air pollution from solid fuels, unsafe water sources and smoking were the top avoidable risks associated with health loss and a significant amount of disease burden among Indians in both sexes, in 2013. Of these, high blood pressure, diabetes and household air pollution from solid fuels were estimated to cause 7.8 per cent, 5.2 per cent and 4.7 per cent of the total health loss in India in 2013 respectively.

Unfortunately, the most important causes of environmental degradation in general and air pollution in particular — the continuing steep increase in India’s population — is hardly discussed. India’s population, 360.10 million in 1951, rose to 1.21 billion in 2011 and is now estimated to stand at 1.31 billion. It is expected to rise to 1.45 bullion by 2028, when its population will equal China’s, and to 1.5 billion by 2050.

The increase has not only led to encroachment in forest areas and reduction in the country’s green cover but greater emissions from all sources to meet escalating demand for food, clothing, energy, consumer and luxury goods, shelter, healthcare, transport, entertainment, education, and a huge expansion of the economic, governmental and societal infrastructure to cater to these. Surely, Delhi’s dubious distinction as the world’s most polluted city has much to do with the steep rise in its population, which, 13.85 million according to the 2001 census figures, rose to 16.75 million in 2011 (census figures) is now over 25 million, which makes it the second largest city in the world, next to Tokyo with 38 million.

The 2014 revision of the World Urbanisation Prospects by UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs’s population division which has pointed this out, further states that while Tokyo’s population is set to decline, Delhi’s will rise to 36 million by 2030, when it will be only a million less than Tolyo’s 37 million. One consequence of this will be a huge increase in the number of vehicles which, according to the Surrey University research team’s report cited above, would increase from 4.7 million in 2010 to nearly 26 million by 2030. There will also be a vast increase in energy consumption which, according to the report, rose by 57 per cent from 2001 to 2011.

It is not just India’s population. The United States-based Council on Foreign Relations’ Issue Brief entitled, The Global Climate Change Regime, cites the American Meteorological Society as saying that there was a 90 per cent probability of global temperatures rising by 3.5 to 7.4 degrees Celsius in less than a 100 years, with even greater increases over land and the poles. The result of the shifts would be widespread disasters in the form of rising sea levels, violent and volatile weather patterns, desertification, famine, water shortages, and other secondary effects including conflict.