What Delhi's odd-even drive tells India

Business Today , Sunday, February 07, 2016
Correspondent : Joe C Mathew
The Delhi government's odd-even day driving restriction experiment must have reminded everyone across the country that living in India's capital city carries a health risk.

Even as Delhi begins the second phase of its war against vehicular pollution, a global study says that health risks associated with air pollution is not confined to the national capital region, or its metropolitan cities.

About 75 per cent of the country's population breathes what World Health Organization (WHO) considers as unsafe air, the biennial global Environmental Performance Index (EPI) released at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Switzerland last month suggests.

The WHO considers air unsafe when average annual exposure to fine particulate matter exceeds 10 micrograms per cubic metre. Delhi exceeds this limit by over 15 times. Rest of India is not that bad, but increased industrial production, automotive transportation etc., the report says, foul the air, exposing human populations to dangerous airborne compounds.

"More than 3.5 billion people, or half of the world's population, live in nations where average exposure to fine particulate matter exceeds levels

WHO considers safe. One-third (1.3 billion) of these people live in the East Asia and Pacific region, where in China and South Korea more than 50 per cent of their populations are exposed to unsafe levels of fine particulate matter. In India and Nepal, the percentage is nearly 75 per cent", the report says.

The index, though, is not just about the health hazards of air-pollution. It ranks countries' performance on high-priority environmental issues in areas like protection of human health and protection of ecosystems.

India ranks 141 in the EPI 2016 that tracks 180 nations.

And there is a reason. India's problem is not just air-pollution. For instance, if Switzerland, which ranks 16th in the list, is having ambient ozone pollution and ambient particulate matter pollution as the problems that it needs to tackle, India has, in addition to those problems, the health hazards posed by unsafe sanitation, unsafe water, and household air pollution from soild fuels. India performs poorly across all five environmental risk factors almost equally, the report says.

The only silver lining is the fact that India's position is improving. The country was 14 lower in ranking than it is today in the last report that came two years ago.

Over a 10 year period, its overall score has grown 20.8 per cent. One reason is that India has already adopted the EPI methodology to develop its own monitoring systems. "India launched an Environmental Sustainability Index at the state level, with a focus on critical in-country issues such as population pressures, waste management, and environmental budgets", the report notes.

Investments in clean water, sanitation, and energy infrastructure are the main contributors to improvements in the nations' scores. This also means that India can hope for better scores in future if the government is successful in implementing its flagship "Swatch Bharat", "Clean Ganga" and "renewable energy mission" programmes.

The EPI report takes India's pollution control measures into account - including the odd-even experiment - to conclude that "while gains have been made, the country still has a long way to go".

 
SOURCE : http://www.businesstoday.in/opinion/perspective/what-delhi-odd-even-drive-tells-india/story/228924.html
 


Back to pevious page



The NetworkAbout Us  |  Our Partners  |  Concepts   
Resources :  Databases  |  Publications  |  Media Guide  |  Suggested Links
Happenings :  News  |  Events  |  Opinion Polls  |  Case Studies
Contact :  Guest Book  |  FAQs |  Email Us