JOIN USMaharashtra takes baby steps towards clean air
Home to the country’s financial capital, Mumbai, and being one of the most urbanised states in India, Maharashtra has the most number of cities that have experienced air pollution levels exceeding National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).
However, three years since the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) was announced, researchers at the Centre for Research and on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) in their report - “Tracing the Hazy Air: Progress Report on National Clean Air Programme (NCAP)” reveal that progress has been scarce and shoddy.
Despite having 25 such cities, only 19 cities have been included in NCAP and local authorities have set emission reduction targets only for two cities in the state -- Amravati, and Aurangabad.
“The state government has announced that it will complete the mandatory source-apportionment studies in 19 cities by March 2023 -- just a year ahead of the country’s deadline to reduce PM 2.5 levels,” said Sunil Dahiya, author of the report and an analyst at CREA.
“The studies were started way back in 2017 and were expected to be completed by 2019, such a delay is wastage of public money and resources and would delay the directed sector-specific actions,” he added.
Maharashtra has 80 manual and 41 continuous ambient air quality monitoring stations across 36 districts in the state.
Commenting on the air quality monitoring infrastructure, Dahiya said, “In Maharashtra, existing monitoring infrastructure is currently insufficient, and there is an urgent need to aggressively monitor air quality across the state. While increasing the number of monitoring stations is one way to improve the transparency of air quality data, another step that should be taken in ensuring that industries share data from monitoring stations installed in and around their facilities, as they are required to monitor air quality in accordance with environmental clearance conditions.”
The report highlights that apart from city-specific action plans, no other plans have been formulated under NCAP prescribed timelines, state action plans, regional action plans, and the transboundary action plan still have to see the light of the day.
“NCAP and Clean Air Action Plans for Cities were dynamic documents which were expected to be updated and made more efficient in controlling the rising air pollution levels with completion of research studies. But, sadly, all timelines for the formulation of state and regional level action plans as well as emission inventory and source apportionment studies have passed, and Maharashtra has not formulated any of them till now,” said Dahiya.
The past two years have been unusual due to the Covid-19 pandemic resulting in a halt for industrial and economic activities due to national and regional lockdowns. A better indicator to track the effectiveness and implementation of NCAP was to track the progress on indicators identified under the programme.
“Maharashtra has proved its intent that it is serious about confronting air pollution and climate change by becoming a member of many national and international programmes to clean the air and decarbonize,” Dahiya proposed as a path forward for Maharashtra.
“It must establish explicit absolute pollution/emission load reduction objectives, clean or close polluting industrial units such as non-compliant power plants, complete all research and action plans, and improve openness on clean air action and financial usage,” he said.
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