POLLUTION

National Mission on Air Pollution Likely to Have Dashboard for 132 Cities With All Polluting Parameters

Sunil Kataria/TOI, BCCL-Delhi — File photo: Smog engulfs Delhi's India Gate
(Sunil Kataria/TOI, Delhi, BCCL)

The soon-to-be-launched National Mission on Air Pollution (NMAP) will have a dashboard for all polluting parameters that are being monitored and for all 132 cities that are currently under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP).

The dashboard will have all the information online and in real-time in a user-friendly manner. There will be a dedicated NMAP website too.

The dashboard, which will be an important component, is being developed by the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change along with GIZ, an arm of the German government working in tandem with several Indian ministries and states on environmental and sustainable issues.

"The National Mission on Air Pollution is under consideration and will be launched soon. An effective framework for planning and implementation of activities for improving air quality in identified cities have been put in place involving all stakeholders," Union Environment, Forests and Climate Change Minister Bhupender Yadav told IANS on Thursday.

Once the Mission is in place, 132 cities would come under the Mission and the NCAP would be subsumed in it, he added.

The NCAP was launched in January 2019 as a long-term, time-bound, national-level strategy to tackle the air pollution problem across the country in a comprehensive manner. It had targeted a 20 to 30 per cent reduction in Particulate Matter concentrations by 2024, keeping 2017 as the base year for the comparison of concentration.

'The India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative' report of December 2020 by interdisciplinary journal Lancet Planetary Health had pegged the deaths of Indians due to air pollution in 2019, at 1.7 million, or 18 per cent of all deaths in the country. The death rate from outdoor ambient air pollution had increased during this period by 115 per cent, the study had said.

Domestic firewood burning, construction dust and that from roads, open fields, agri-waste burning, industrial burning of coal and other fossil fuels, thermal power plants, brick kilns, vehicular emissions and diesel-powered generator sets are some of the prominent sources of air pollution.

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The above article has been published from a wire agency with minimal modifications to the headline and text.

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