Delhi misses NCAP budget allocation from CPCB in first year of programme: RTI

Amalendu Upadhyaya
Posted By -Amalendu Upadhyaya
January 11, 2020
0

One year
of National Clean Air Programme

New Delhi, January
10th, 2020 : One year since the Ministry of Environment, Forests and
Climate Change (MoEFCC) launched the National Clean Air Programme
(NCAP) on 10th January 2019, climate and energy news aggregator site,  carbon copy has launched a dashboard  to track the progress of India’s
national air pollution management plan, across a range of parameters
like budget spending and improvement in PM levels.

122
non-attainment cities did not meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards

The NCAP has
identified 122 non-attainment cities in the country which did not meet the
National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for the period of 2011-15 under
the National Air Quality Monitoring Programme (NAMP).

The
programme aims to reduce 20-30% PM 2.5 and 10 levels across these 122 cities by
2024, taking levels in 2017 as the base year. The initial data on the NCAP
tracker is based on responses received under Right to Information Act 2005 from
the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) on budget disbursed to 28
non-attainment cities so far and the breakdown of expenses.

Ronak
Sutaria, CEO of
Urban Sciences, the low-cost air quality monitoring start-up said,

“The NCAP is
an important landmark policy to enable coordination between states and for air
pollution control & mitigation interventions to be implemented at scale.
Understanding what actions 122 cities – tier 1, 2 and 3 — across the country
have taken and how much impact it has had in reducing particulate matter level
is key to India’s success in taking on the air pollution challenge that we’re
facing right now. The dashboard is a live interactive tool which provides data
and information for better engagement between citizens and policy makers for
clean air.”

According to
the NCAP dashboard, INR 28 crores have been disbursed to 28
non-attainment cities by the CPCB so far, which include cities like Varanasi,
Lucknow, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru.

Delhi has
not made it into this list so far. Based on the list of actions each city is
undertaking to meet its NCAP goals, the dashboard has identified 5 metrics —
monitoring coverage, pollution mitigation, pollution clean-up, public
engagement & awareness and miscellaneous activities.

While
Hyderabad has spent the maximum of INR 7.8 crores on increased monitoring
efforts among all 28 cities, Ahmedabad is trailing at INR 80 lakhs on
installation and commissioning of CAAQMs.

Meanwhile
Raipur is leading the way with green paving activities worth INR 4.2 crores,
while Surat has spent INR 50 lakhs on this activity so far as the only effort
one year since NCAP came into effect.

Aarti
Khosla, Director of Carbon Copy which was set up in 2017 said,

“Air pollution is no longer an unseen unknown phenomenon. Its public health effects are being experienced far and wide. China is the closest example for India on how it controlled its emissions and penalised polluters to control the airpocalypse in Beijing from 2012 to 2017. If India wants to create a success story in air pollution management and mitigation, proper implementation, enforcement and execution in NCAP is crucial to that effect. This tracker is meant to add transparency in tracking implementation. While India is one of the few countries which is on track to meet its international climate commitments, the country’s highest health burden due to air pollution make it imperative for India to address this problem at its root cause and urgently.”

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