Air Pollution | India needs lasting solutions, lockdowns are temporary succour

(Image: AP)

As the quality of air in Delhi remains to be a cause for concern, sight must not be lost of the fact that air pollution is a pan-India health and environmental hazard.

Air pollution is by no means a Delhi-specific issue even if the severity of the challenge faced in the national capital sometimes makes us take our eyes off what is happening on this front in the rest of the country. Kolkata and Mumbai, for instance, have recently joined Delhi in the ignominious list of the world’s top-10 polluted cities.

Tackling the air pollution menace calls for a national approach that goes beyond considering temporary lockdowns, and stoppage of construction activity for limited periods at places where air quality has reached dangerous proportions. Such steps can offer partial and temporary benefits. The possibilities of economic activity coming under stress and, also, livelihoods being affected would, in any case, always come in the way of imposing lockdowns beyond a few days at a stretch.

We cannot be unmindful of the reality that keeping construction activity shut through lockdowns is a move that is fraught with risks. Such stoppages will immediately and adversely impact daily wage labours who do not have a financial safety net to fall onto.  Such stoppages will have a negative effect of unpredictable magnitude on the larger economy because the construction sector is one of the biggest employers of labour in India, including casual labour.

A ban on construction could, for example, severely impact the pace of road construction, an arena where India has been doing particularly well in recent times. Road construction in the country surged from 28 km per day in FY20 to 37 km per day in FY21.

Wider adoption of clean energy, on the other hand, could prove an excellent measure to curb air pollution nationwide considering that the energy sector is the largest source of three major air pollutants: nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, and Particulate Matter 2.5. In February, the International Energy Agency (IEA), in its report ‘India Energy Outlook 2021’, said that although PM 2.5 is the air pollutant “of most concern”, nitrogen oxides emissions are “increasingly problematic in urban areas”, and sulphur dioxide concentrations are an issue “in areas with many thermal power or industrial plants”.

In the same report, the IEA had pointed out that “ensuring access to clean energy would reduce household air pollution”, and increasing the share of renewable energy would “permanently reduce power sector air pollution”. It has further said that an improvement in energy efficiency could tackle the concentration of air pollutants “across the energy economy”.

In 2019 itself, the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) launched by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, had indicated that expanding renewable energy facilities could improve the quality of air we breathe.

It is time that we came up with solutions for this problem that are of a more lasting nature. Hastening the transition to clean energy sources currently offers the best promise in this regard considering the progress already made, and ambitions that the country has as far as clean energy is concerned.

It may, thus, only be in the fitness of things if authorities could fast-track implementation of clean energy projects in regions facing the biggest brunt of the air pollution problem.

Sumali Moitra is a current affairs commentator. Twitter: @sumalimoitra.

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.