In November, just when India appeared to have barely managed to bring the outbreak of a deadly coronavirus wave under control, the country’s highest court advised the government to consider another lockdown, this time to prevent people don’t get sick in poisonous air.
For weeks, Delhi’s skies have been shrouded in a cloud of toxic smog. In the absence of wind to disperse the pollution, the air continues to fill with fumes produced inside the city and beyond its borders in neighboring agricultural states which regularly burn straw (a practice known as the name thatch burn). As winter arrived, the wind speed slowed and pollutants accumulated in the air, trapping the city in a toxic bubble. The acrid air itches the throat and weighs down the chest as soon as it is inhaled.
Air pollution is a long-standing problem in Delhi. City residents lose nine years of their life in the bad air. But this year the situation has become unbearable, with the Air Quality Index (AQI) hitting 462 (under 50 is considered safe). And the problem is neither limited to Delhi nor to winters. India is the third most polluted country in the world and is home to 22 of the 30 most polluted cities according to 2020 World Air Quality Report, published by the Swiss organization IQ Air.
In November, just when India appeared to have barely managed to bring the outbreak of a deadly coronavirus wave under control, the country’s highest court advised the government to consider another lockdown, this time to prevent people don’t get sick in poisonous air.
For weeks, Delhi’s skies have been shrouded in a cloud of toxic smog. In the absence of wind to disperse the pollution, the air continues to fill with fumes produced inside the city and beyond its borders in neighboring agricultural states which regularly burn straw (a practice known as the name thatch burn). As winter arrived, the wind speed slowed and pollutants accumulated in the air, trapping the city in a toxic bubble. The acrid air itches the throat and weighs down the chest as soon as it is inhaled.
Air pollution is a long-standing problem in Delhi. City residents lose nine years of their life in the bad air. But this year the situation has become unbearable, with the Air Quality Index (AQI) hitting 462 (under 50 is considered safe). And the problem is neither limited to Delhi nor to winters. India is the third most polluted country in the world and is home to 22 of the 30 most polluted cities according to 2020 World Air Quality Report, published by the Swiss organization IQ Air.
Even as India’s pollution problem reaches catastrophic proportions, the Indian government is still continuing to transition to clean energy at a snail’s pace. The government likes to argue that any just transition to clean energy would mean that the world’s poor receive financial and technological assistance from those who can afford it (who also happen to be historical polluters whose development needs to increase. world temperatures in the first place). But none of this is an excuse enough for India not to put its own house in order. The Indian government could do a lot right now if its various levels of federal government were prepared to work together rather than point the finger at each other.
Bhargav Krishna, a member of the Center for Policy Research, an Indian think tank, said that a year-round approach, rather than statements of surprise every time the pollution season arrives, is needed to fix “a faulty regulatory system “. “Tackling air pollution means acting year round in transport, industry, electricity, dust and other sources, not just stubble burning, which is a seasonal problem,” he said. declared Krishna. Foreign police. “The airshed from Punjab to Bihar is interconnected, so action needs to be coordinated and meaningful across the region, not just Delhi-centric.”
For three years, every November and December, Indian television channels have summoned representatives of the various political parties governing the national capital region and the central government and questioned them about the rise in pollution. But the debates are little more than the shouting of matches that reveal a glaring lack of cooperation on how to approach the problem in a coherent manner.
Delhi is ruled by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which claims it has done all it can: shut down its two coal-fired power plants, ban the use of diesel, temporarily suspend construction, install smog towers, put set up crews to monitor the garbage fire, and offered a bio-decomposer to agricultural states to dispose of thatch in an environmentally friendly manner rather than burning it down. But environmentalists say much more is needed, and not all steps have been fully implemented. “We need more public transport and less private transport,” said Ravi Agarwal, a Delhi-based environmental activist. “Construction must be strictly controlled on the sites. The garbage burning has completely stopped.
The Delhi government, however, accuses the Indian National Congress Party in the Punjab of turning a blind eye to the problem. Agriculture is the main occupation in the agricultural state, and farmers are the largest part of the voters. Any party that forces farmers to stop burning the stubble risks losing its support in the election. Delhi also blames its neighboring states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), for not having closed all their coal-fired power stations or for having opted for decarbonization technologies.
In turn, the BJP declares that the AAP is ineffective. He adds that the central government has done its part to help Delhi by subsidizing Happy Seeders, vehicles that plant seeds directly into stubble without the need to plow, eliminating the burning of crop residues. But farmers say they are required to prepay for Happy Seeders and can only receive the subsidies later, making planters a financially unattractive option. Shutting down five of the 11 coal-fired power plants in Delhi and neighboring states was also an unpopular move as Congress-led Punjab and BJP-led Haryana faced severe power outages.
In a country facing serious problems such as poverty, unemployment and a glaring lack of basic infrastructure, pollution is simply not an electoral problem. But unless it does, the political class will drag their feet to come up with a cohesive plan and be reluctant to cooperate.
Jitendra Kumar regularly drives his taxi between Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. During one of these trips with Foreign police from Delhi to Meerut, a city in western Uttar Pradesh led by the BJP, Kumar pointed to the buildings made invisible by the smog. He complained about the lack of visibility and the air which he said was difficult to breathe. Yet he refused to turn off the car at a traffic light where the Delhi government had deployed volunteers to hold signs that read: “Red light on, car off: do your part to reduce pollution”. Lack of awareness and reluctance to change attitudes is a big part of the problem.
But perhaps a bigger problem is that religious divisions, not pollution, are the main theme of Indian politics. “India is divided over Hindu-Muslims,” Kumar said. “It’s our policy. No one votes on the basis of who will reduce pollution.
“We are strong voters of the BJP and we oppose Muslims. Pollution, what can we do about pollution? As Kumar drove along the Barapullah Highway which leads to the new Meerut-Delhi Highway, he praised the BJP for building many new highways and reducing his travel time. Better infrastructure will also reduce pollution, but Kumar and most Indians are still concerned about development first. Seventy percent of the country’s infrastructure has yet to be built.
Navroz Dubash works as a professor at the Center for Policy Research, researching and writing on climate change, energy and air pollution. He said Foreign police that India’s emissions are increasing and even have to increase because Indians start from low per capita energy consumption. “We have to pivot to meet these needs with low carbon energy, but that pivot will take some time, and in the meantime Indians cannot be without energy,” Dubash said. “Since emissions have to increase, the key issue is to slow the increase; we are not at the stage where we are talking about a decline. To do this, we need to develop low-carbon sector-by-sector plans that also respond to development needs and aggressively implement them, clearly indicating what international support is needed to do so.
At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged that India will reach net zero – the goal of carbon neutrality – by 2070. This target year is 20 years older. later than countries that have already developed their infrastructure, and yet it is deemed very ambitious. Eighty-five percent air pollution in India is generated from coal, biomass and waste, and more 80 percent of India’s energy needs are filled with dirty fuels. Experts believe that the country’s use of coal and crude oil peak by 2040 and 2050, respectively.
Modi asked the international community for $ 1 trillion to support India’s attempt to reach its goal of net zero by 2070. But according to one to study According to the Indian think tank Council on Energy, Environment, and Water, India needs $ 10 trillion to reach its 2070 target. It needs a tenth of that, $ 1 trillion, of the international community to decarbonize. Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of the board, said that “developed countries must accelerate their climate finance targets over the next few years,“while Indian financial regulators must enable“ an ecosystem to finance India’s transition to a green economy. ”He added that private capital from national and international institutions should constitute the bulk of investments.
Agarwal, the environmental activist, added that India needs many new technologies to fight pollution. For example, he said, technologies for upgrading coal-fired power stations, technologies (such as coal washing) for carbon absorption and decarbonization since India has high carbon content coal. ash, and technologies for renewable energy and infrastructure for electric vehicles are all needed.
The international community must release at least part of the pledged funds and proactively share the technology. But the Indians too must start to challenge their political class and make pollution their main electoral issue. Otherwise, they will condemn themselves and future generations to gaze at the yawning sky in vain for a speck of blue or even a single cloud.