GS Paper: GS3-18.Conservation, Environmental Pollution and Degradation, Environmental Impact Assessment.

Despite efforts from several levels, air pollution is getting worse day by day. The article suggests the strategy to deal with the issue of air pollution.

Solvable problem

• Pollution is very much a solvable problem but it cannot be solved on an emergency basis.
• It has to be dealt with firmly and gradually.
• Why gradually? Because there are many sources of pollution and it would be prohibitively costly to stop them or even significantly reduce them all at once.

Replacing existing technologies with existing technology

• The biggest sources air polltion nationally are cooking fires, coal-fired power plants, various industries, crop residue burning, and construction and road dust. Vehicles are further down on the list.
• Dealing with all these sources will require a gradual replacement of existing technologies with new technologies.
• Cooking fires must be replaced with LPG, induction stoves, and other electric cooking appliances.
• Old coal power plants must be closed and replaced with wind and solar power and batteries while newer plants must install new pollution control equipment.
• No new coal-fired power plants should be built — with renewables being cheaper, coal is obsolete for power generation.
• Other industries that use coal will have to gradually switch over to cleaner fuel sources such as gas or hydrogen while becoming more energy-efficient at the same time.
• Farmers will have to switch crops or adopt alternative methods of residue management.
• Diesel and petrol vehicles must gradually be replaced by electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles running on power generated from renewables.

Legal measures and issues

• Governments can make clean investments more profitable and dirty investments less profitable by taxing polluting activities and subsidising clean investments.
• The judiciary is more powerful but has far less scientific and technical competence.
• It tends to act only during crises and focus on past mistakes rather than planning to prevent new ones.

Reforms in regulatory agency

• Our existing laws do not allow the central and state pollution boards to levy pollution fee or cess based on pollution emissions.
• Since closing down an industry is a drastic step, it almost never happens.
• We need a regulatory agency that can levy pollution fee or cess, is that the regulatory decision need not be an all-or-nothing decision.
• Pollution fees can start small, and the EPA can announce that they will rise by a certain percentage every year.
• The regulatory agency should be given some independence,like
• 1) a head appointed for a five-year term removable only by impeachment.
• 2) a guaranteed budget funded by a small percentage tax on all industries.
• 3) autonomy to hire staff and to set pollution fees after justification through scientific studies.
• Three advantages of the regulator with such powers would be-
• 1) Politicians in power can pass on the blame for decisions on pollution fees to the EPA.
• 2) Pollution fees raise revenue for the government.
• 3) If the law establishing an independent EPA is written to require that changes to pollution fees and regulations must be published in advance, and cannot involve abrupt changes, then surprises are avoided.
• Industry opposition will be muted, especially if industry gets a piece of the revenue to invest in new technologies.

Conclusion

Our pollution problem has taken decades to grow into the monster that it is. It can’t be killed in a day. We need the scientific and technical capacity that only a securely funded independent EPA can bring to shrink pollution down to nothing.

The article deals with the issue of allocation of funds to tackle air pollution and issues with it.

Allocation in the budget

• A ₹4,400 crore package was announced in last budget for 2020-21 to tackle air pollution in 102 of India’s most polluted cities.
• The funds would be used to reduce particulate matter by 20%-30% from 2017 levels by 2024 under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP).

Issues with estimating the scale of the problem

• It is unclear if this amount is adequate because the scale of the problem is unknown.
• Delhi government spent money on the measurement of pollution for in Delhi that far exceeds s allocations that find mention in the Centre and State government’s budgeting books.
• The funds allocated don’t account for the trained manpower and the support system necessary to effectively maintain the systems and these costs are likely to be significant.
• Historically, cites have used manual machines to measure specified pollutants and their use has been inadequate.
• An analysis by research agencies Carbon Copy and Respirer Living Sciences recently found that only 59 out of 122 cities had PM 2.5 data available.
• Only three States, had all their installed monitors providing readings from 2016 to 2018.
• Prior to 2016, making comparisons of reduction strictly incomparable.
• Now manual machines are being replaced by automatic ones and India is still largely reliant on imported machines.
• In the case of the National Capital Region, at least ₹600 crore was spent by the Ministry of Agriculture over two years to provide subsidised equipment to farmers in Punjab and Haryana and dissuade them from burning paddy straw.
• Yet this year, there have been more farm fires than the previous year and their contribution to Delhi’s winter air woes remain unchanged.
• This indicates that money alone doesn’t work.

Conclusion

A clear day continues to remain largely at the mercy of favourable meteorology. While funds are critical, proper enforcement, adequate staff and stemming the sources of pollution on the ground are vital to the NCAP meeting its target.

Issue of flood in the cities

• Over 50 peple died in the wake of torrential rains in the third week of October in Hyderabad.
• This experience is not unique to the city of Hyderabad, five years ago Chennai saw a massive flood costing much damage and lives.
• Gurugram over the past few years comes to a complete standstill during the monsoon months.
• And for Mumbai, the monsoon has become synonymous with flooding and enormous damages.

Causes of frequent urban floods:

Natural:

• Meteorological Factors: Heavy rainfall, cyclonic storms and thunderstorms causes water to flow quickly through paved urban areas and impound in low lying areas.
• Hydrological Factors: Overbank flow channel networks, occurrence of high tides impeding the drainage in coastal cities.
• Climate Change: Climate change due to various anthropogenic events has led to extreme weather events.

Anthropological:

• Unplanned Urbanization: Unplanned Urbanization is the key cause of urban flooding. A major concern is blocking of natural drainage pathways through construction activity and encroachment on catchment areas, riverbeds and lakebeds.
• Destruction of lakes: A major issue in India cities. Lakes can store the excess water and regulate the flow of water. However, pollution of natural urban water bodies and converting them for development purposes has increased risk of floods.
• Unauthorised colonies and excess construction: Reduced infiltration due paving of surfaces which decreases ground absorption and increases the speed and amount of surface flow
• Poor Solid Waste Management System: Improper waste management system and clogging of storm-water drains because of silting, accumulation of non-biodegradable wastes and construction debris.
• Drainage System: Old and ill maintained drainage system is another factor making cities in India vulnerable to flooding.
• Irresponsible steps: Lack of attention to natural hydrological system and lack of flood control measures.

Impact of the devastation due to floods:

• On economy: Damage to infrastructure, roads and settlements, industrial production, basic supplies, post disaster rehabilitation difficulties etc.
• On human population and wildlife: Trauma, loss of life, injuries and disease outbreak, contamination of water etc.
• On environment: Loss of habitat, tree and forest cover, biodiversity loss and large scale greenery recovery failure.
• On transport and communication: Increased traffic congestion, disruption in rail services, disruption in communication- on telephone, internet cables causing massive public inconvenience.

What is to be done

1) Management of wetlands

• We neglect the issues of incremental land use change, particularly of those commons which provide us with necessary ecological support — wetlands.
•  We need to start paying attention to the management of our wetlands by involving local communities.
• The risk is going to increase year after year with changing rainfall patterns and a problem of urban terrain which is incapable of absorbing, holding and discharging water.

2) Implementing the idea of sponge cities

• The idea of a sponge city is to make cities more permeable so as to hold and use the water which falls upon it.
• Sponge cities absorb the rain water, which is then naturally filtered by the soil and allowed to reach urban aquifers.
• This allows for the extraction of water from the ground through urban or peri-urban wells.
• This water can be treated easily and used for city water supply.
• In built form, this implies contiguous open green spaces, interconnected waterways, and channels and ponds across neighbourhoods that can naturally detain and filter water.
• It implies support for urban ecosystems, bio-diversity and newer cultural and recreational opportunities,
• These can all be delivered effectively through an urban mission along the lines of the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY) and Smart Cities Mission.

On a top priority, such a mission should address the following.

• 1) Wetland policy: In most of our lakes, the shallow ends, which often lie beyond the full tank level, have disappeared.
• These shallow ends are best characterised as wetlands.
• Regardless of ownership, land use on even this small scale needs to be regulated by development control.
• 2) Watershed management and emergency drainage plan is next.
• This should be clearly enunciated in policy and law.
• 3) Ban against terrain alteration is third.
• Lasting irreversible damage has been done to the city by builders, property owners, and public agencies by flattening terrain and altering drainage routes.
• 4) Use of porus material: Our cities are becoming increasingly impervious to water, not just because of increasing built up but also because of the nature of materials used.
• To improve the city’s capacity to absorb water, new porous materials and technologies must be encouraged or mandated across scales.
• Examples of these technologies are bioswales and retention systems, permeable material for roads and pavement, drainage systems which allow storm water to trickle into the ground, green roofs and harvesting systems in buildings.

Conclusion

We can learn to live with nature, we can regulate human conduct through the state and we can strategically design where we build. We need to urgently rebuild our cities such that they have the sponginess to absorb and release water without causing so much misery and so much damage to the most vulnerable of our citizens, as we have seen.