Have we ever asked ourselves, what are basic human living standards?
Does that include our right over clean air, water or whatever the Nature has promised us until we began encroaching on it?
Indians, especially the ones living in the vicinity of its splendid capital, are blessed to get bathed in its aura but are equally cursed with its plummeting air quality levels.
And it has become so common, so normal for the entire subcontinent that we barely care about one-third of us dying every year due to air pollution.
This toxicity in the air we breathe accounts for nearly 30.7% of deaths or 2.5 million innocent lives perishing every year. India comes second in the world for fossil related deaths and Uttar Pradesh first within the country for the same.
If combined with the number of global deaths from all outdoor airborne pollutants including dust and smoke from agricultural residue burning and wildfires, it may yield a total of 4.2 million.
World Health Organization (WHO) has even estimated that 9 out of 10 people worldwide take in unsafe air, majority of whom are living in low and middle-income countries.
Apart from causing diseases like asthma, bronchitis, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, lung cancer or heart disease, toxic air has now been blamed to trigger dementia, Alzheimer and other mental health issues.
This gets even amusing when we say that this issue pays a visit every year and we still don’t know what are its actual sources.
Is India awake from its slumber to tackle this menace?
With public questioning the government’s stand every time smog saturate the Indian cities’ air, public servants and representatives have begun paying attention to this gradually nurtured crisis.
Indian Parliament has recently passed ‘The Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas Bill 2021’.
So far, the monitoring of air quality in the capital has been done by a gamut of diverged institutions like CPCB, State pollution control boards including Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan and the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA) to be governed by MOEFCC and the Supreme Court at certain times and cases.
But the bill suggests constituting a separate overarching body that undertakes all under its ambit, replacing EPCA, for a comprehensive, efficient, and time-bound investigation and regulation of air quality issue.
The bill, however, decriminalizes the burning of stubble, instead of provision of better mechanisms to utilize paddy straw or another agricultural residue. The penalty still exists, but the imprisonment for such indiscriminate burning has been condoned with.
But the environmentalists apprehend such a law that prevents an individual from appealing against a decision made under the law in the Apex Court.
Delhi Government wanted to ascertain the air pollution sources threatening and lessening breaths of its residents and hence invested in a study to trace pollutants on real-time basis titled “A Real-time source apportionment study for Delhi”.
Air pollution, a bigger threat to people, has find voices amongst opposing factions of politics, particularly as a matter of contention between the city and the Central government.
That study, nevertheless, has been junked by the Delhi cabinet recently after even paying a significant ₹88 lakhs for it.
Another ‘first of its kind’ study is yet to be conducted by a team of The Energy & Resources Institute (TERI), IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Delhi and IISER Mohali.
Is it just India breathing uneasy?
According to the latest World Air Quality Report 2020, South Asia being home to 1.94 billion population, holds air pollution as a third highest risk for premature deaths in the region.
Conversations like South Asia Clean Air 2030 vision and OneSouthAsia can help in deciding what exactly needs to be done in South Asia to eliminate this danger.
For example: increase the use of renewables or increase the appropriation of monitoring the air quality or work through the trans-regional multilateral agreements those can garner better cooperation and hopes for cleaner air and surroundings.
Air pollution has not remained a localized phenomenon within the very administrative boundaries created by humans.
It gets rifted across borders, its impacts spreading to places far away from the source. Therefore, this requires a cross-state, cross-country and a regional response.
Citizens have to ultimately step forward and own the agenda for access to clean air. After all, it is a public commodity that the Earth rightfully gave to us all. Its adverse impacts affect everyone, denigrating every potential that an individual can render in the name of this planet.
“Youth ideas, participation, and representation are key to demanding better policies, stricter action, driving innovation, and finding solutions.”
Curbing Air Pollution will cleanse the world beyond just improving air quality:
If the countries respective targets are met for cleaning air, then following can be achieved.
Climate change can be minimized: with Carbon reducing upto 20%, methane by 45% until 2030, expected warming by 2050 will be reduced by a third. Further decrease in Nitrogen and sulphur oxides can help save water bodies and architecture.
Ozone affected crop losses can then be reduced by 45%, allowing the natural ecosystems to heal. Several sustainable development goals will become easy to be achieved across the globe adding welfare of the people.
People exposed to air pollution will significantly fall down by 80% to just 430 million form current 1 billion, with premature mortality declining by a third.
When the particulates commonly found in air may be lesser released, it may help even save glaciers and ice caps (black carbon increases albedo) from melting, sea levels from rising and so many disasters those follow.
From the unseen aspects for a while, this world may become a better place.