The EPI ranking is flawed, but we must do better on air quality

The Big Lens

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) is a data-driven biennial summary of the progress made by 180 countries towards improving environmental health, protecting ecosystem vitality, mitigating climate change and the overall state of sustainability. It uses 40 performance indicators under 11 headings. India has been downgraded to 180 – out of 180 countries -- in 2022, from 168 in 2020. The report recognises South Asia as a region with a wide range of economic and government effectiveness, earning the highest median regional score (31.8). But what brings down the Indian score is the poor performance in the Air Quality category, especially of India, Pakistan and Nepal in the region, which account for 21 of the 30 worst polluted cities in the world. Though the report claims to provide a way to spot problems, set targets, track trends, understand outcomes and identify best policy practices, all that it has managed to do is to provide a handle to BJP/Modi baiters to jeer at the government.

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has rejected the findings of the report saying, “No indicator talks about renewable energy, energy efficiency and process optimisation. The selection of indicators is biased and incomplete.” The ministry has also pointed out that the emissions projections do not “take into account a longer time period, extent of renewable energy capacity and use, additional carbon sinks, and energy efficiency, etc.” It went on to say that the report was based on “unfounded assumptions, surmises and unscientific methods.” For one, it is doubtful if the authors, researchers and experts visited all the countries in South Asia, especially India, to conduct a spot study of the situation. Did they merely extrapolate data from multiple sources?

The clean air quality project was started in India as far back as 1974 with the establishment of the Central Pollution Control Board, followed up with the introduction of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards in 1994 and the Air Quality Index (AQI) methodology in January 2014. The NCAP targets to reduce PM2.5 pollution in 122 non-attainment cities by 20-30% by 2024 from the levels in 2017. The EPI does not take into account these factors but summarily concludes that some experts doubt the efficacy of these programmes which lack “detailed information on the technical and financial resources required to succeed”. These conclusions are ostensibly based on a report prepared by an NGO. Such reports leave enormous scope to challenge the methodology and findings and even suspect the motive behind the conclusions. These are good enough reasons to reject the EPI report.

Having said that though, it would be prudent for the government to study the report, identify the problems, initiate course correction, and resist the temptation to shoot the messenger.

There is little doubt that the air quality in more than a dozen cities have gone from bad to worse, with the local administration doing nothing beyond shifting the blame to another body. Many cities have industrial clusters very close to human dwellings and some of them spew smoke and hazardous pollutants into the atmosphere. These industries are found to be the single-largest source of producers of multiple pollutants, including PM2.5, SO2 and NOx, with the power sector coming a close second in emitting NOx and SO2. Overemphasis on ‘smart city’ has taken a big toll on the creation of a healthy living environment. Expanding cities and urban housing has hastened the need for the creation of more infrastructure, transport systems and huge artificial climate control devices, resulting in huge greenhouse gas emissions and contributing to global warming.

Air and water pollution, poor waste management and disposal methods, increasing scarcity of potable water, alarming decrease in groundwater tables, lack of preservation of forests, biodiversity imbalance and drop in biodiversity zones, shrinking space for animals and bird species, human invasion of natural habitat of animals and forests are some of the major environmental issues that confront us.

There is little doubt that the burgeoning population is a problem which needs to be addressed urgently. One way would be to create suburban dwellings and provide greater connectivity so as to reduce overpopulation in cities, whose systems are bursting at the seams. None of the cities have mechanised sewer cleaning systems which can clean, de-silt and remove sewage and sludge accumulated over the years. A strong cabal of contractors use manual scavenging and sewage-cleaning and prevent the use of machines while governments and city corporations have remained mute spectators.

India needs massive power sector reforms, which should include consumer-friendly solar energy usage methods, fast-tracking of green hydrogen plants, and speeding up the process to thorium-based next-generation nuclear reactors.

Achieving the near-term target of a $5 trillion economy and the 2070 goal of net-zero emission have to be balanced as they are not contradictory but complementary. This will require a massive industrial automation process, decongestion of urban centres by improving educational and health infrastructure in rural and suburban areas. The best thing the government can do in the wake of the EPI report is to set up a special purpose vehicle (SPV) -- with more experts and fewer bureaucrats -- to redesign the development plans and make fundamental changes in our thinking and actions.