World Bank suggests ways to arrest the trend.
By P.K.Balachandran
Colombo, January 24 – Air pollution is having a devastating effect on large parts of South Asia. The lack of proper Air Quality Management in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh is causing diseases and deaths, while also slowing down economic development, says a World Bank report.
The report gained world-wide attention after Harvard Economic professor and former IMF chief economist told the World Economic Forum at Davos earlier this week, that the polluted Indian air, rather than the 50% American tariff, that is the main obstacle to India’s economic growth.
Audiences in India, especially admirers of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, were taken aback by Gopinath’s statement as they expected her, a luminary of Indian-origin, to put the blame squarely on US President Donald Trump’s 50% tariff on Indian experts to the US. But she dismissed the tariff issue aside and blamed the polluted air in India for the country’s inability to attract sufficient Foreign Direct Investment.
“Pollution is a challenge in India, and its impact on the economy is far more consequential than any impact of tariffs imposed so far,” she said. Gopinath explained how pollution adversely affects productivity, increases healthcare costs and slows down overall economic activity, making it a silent but serious drag on growth.
Gopinath said that while tariffs often dominate debates, it is the environmental factors that are crying for attention.
“India has made progress in expanding its economy and improving infrastructure, but pollution remains a persistent challenge, particularly in major urban centres. From an international investor’s point of view, if you are thinking of setting up operations in India and living there, the environment matters,” she underlined.
She quoted a 2022 World Bank study to show that pollution causes nearly 1.7 million deaths in India each year, accounting for roughly 18% of the country’s total deaths.
“Tackling pollution must become a top national priority. It needs to be treated as a mission for India,” she stressed. .
A South Asian Problem
What Gopinath said about India is only a part of the problem of air pollution because it is threatening the whole of South Asia. The World Bank’s report entitled “Striving for Clean Air -Air Pollution and Public Health in South Asia” says that the region is a “global hotspot” of air pollution, home to 37 of the 40 most polluted cities in the world. Pollution in South Asia causes an estimated 2 million premature deaths each year and results in significant economic loss. .
An individual takes one breath every three seconds or 38,000 breaths per day. And in South Asia, the individual inhales not good air but extremely unhealthy air, especially in densely populated, poor areas.
But the approaches South Asian governments have followed to reducing air pollution have been ineffective as they have been piecemeal and uncoordinated. Since air pollution freely crosses boundaries, a coordinated and multi-pronged approach is the need of the hour.
The World Bank study found concentrations of fine Particulate Matter, such as soot and small dust (PM2.5) in some of the region’s most densely populated and poor areas to be 20 times higher than what the World Health Organization (WHO) considers healthy – 5 micrograms per cubic meter of air (?g/m3).
Exposure to such extreme air pollution creates stunting and reduced cognitive development in children, respiratory infections and chronic and debilitating diseases in others. Current policy measures, even if fully implemented, will be only partially successful in reducing Particulate Matter (PM2.5) concentrations across South Asia. Tackling air pollution is complicated by the fact that it travels long distances— crossing municipal, state, and national boundaries. However, it could get trapped in large “airsheds” depending upon climate and geography. These airsheds are particularly problematic.
Sources of Pollution
Large industries, power plants, and motor vehicles are dominant sources of air pollution around the world. But in South Asia, other are in addition, other major contributory factors. These are the use of solid fuel combustion in the residences for cooking and heating; small industries, including brick kilns; the burning of high-emission solid fuel; the current management of municipal waste, including the burning of plastics; the inefficient application of mineral fertilizer; fireworks during festivals; and human cremation.
Significant air pollution also emanates from agriculture, including through the generation of secondary particulate matter in the form of ammonia (NH?) emissions from imbalanced fertilizer use and livestock manure that reacts with nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulphur dioxide (SO?) gases from energy, industry, and transportation sources.
In the western part of South Asia, natural sources—such as dust, organic compounds from plants, sea salt, and forest fires—are a significant source of air pollution.
Dust Particles
Some 60% of South Asia’s population lives in heavily polluted areas where levels of dust particles exceed the least stringent World Health Organization (WHO) air quality standard. Air pollution here is responsible for chronic respiratory disease and more than 2 million premature deaths a year in the region.
Dust particles can travel hundreds of kilometres. For example, about 30% of air pollution in the Indian State of Punjab comes from neighbouring Pakistan; 30% of pollution in Bangladesh’s largest cities originates in India due to the predominant wind direction from the northwest to the southeast.
City-by-city Approach Won’t Do
The World Bank study says that it is impossible to improve air quality to healthy levels using the city-by-city approach prevalent across South Asia.
For example, even if Delhi, the most polluted capital city in the world, were to fully implement all technically feasible air pollution control measures by 2030, the city would still not meet the WHO Air Quality Guidelines because pollution is constantly coming in from outside the city.
The inflow of pollution from neighbouring States and bordering countries (like Pakistan) accounts for more than 50% of air Particulate Matter in Delhi. Only through cooperation at the Province, State, and Regional levels can South Asia hope to beat air pollution.
Moreover, current localized efforts to fight air pollution are expensive, the report says. The concentration is on sources like power plants and motorized traffic, because they are visible. But pollution can be better controlled by turning attention to abatement or reduction opportunities in agriculture, small firms, and solid waste management.
If a comprehensive and correct approach is taken, more than 750,000 lives would be saved annually, at a cost of just US$7,600 per life saved, the report says.
Monitors Across South Asia
South Asian countries could collaborate to install Air Quality Monitors (AQM) at critical points throughout an airshed (an area where pollution is concentrated) to generate credible scientific data and work together to build the institutional capacity to analyze them.
This has been done in other parts of the world, including ASEAN countries, China, Europe, and the United States.
Once the monitoring systems have been created, countries could establish joint airshed targets to track emissions within and across countries and encourage the adoption of cost-effective solutions.
Joint efforts could involve sharing experiences in tackling key sources of air pollution in South Asia.
The report analyses scenarios for reducing air pollution with varying degrees of policy implementation and cooperation among countries. The most cost-effective scenario, which calls for full coordination between airsheds, would cut the average exposure to PM2.5 in South Asia to 30 micrograms per cubic meter. This is a unit of concentration used in environmental science to quantify airborne contaminants. More than 750,000 lives will be saved annually.
Carbon Trading
Carbon trading has to be introduced, the report urges. Carbon trading is a market-based system designed to reduce emissions. It allows companies, governments, or individuals to buy and sell permits or credits that represent the right to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide (CO?) or other greenhouse gases. A price is put on carbon emissions to incentivize organizations to reduce their pollution.
Though progress has been made in legislation and planning for air quality management (AQM), South Asia is not on track to reach even the modest WHO Interim Target 1. That target of 35 ?g/m³ (micrograms per cubic meter) is still seven times the concentration that the WHO considers healthy.
The reason for insufficient progress is that, currently, the focus of interventions is almost completely on mitigating pollution generated within cities. Most countries in South Asia have imposed varying emissions standards for vehicles and have mandated low-NOx burners for power plants and filters for some large industrial boilers.
But to achieve greater progress—and more cost-effective progress—the policy focus should broaden into other sectors, especially small manufacturing, agriculture, residential cooking, and waste management, which are important sources of air pollution in South Asia.
This report shows that optimal solutions for achieving clean air are economically feasible in South Asia, but implementation of these policies is lagging. The report demonstrates that the economic benefits of these optimal policies exceed the economic costs by a large margin.
Implementation of these policies requires coordination that provides incentives for cooperation across different jurisdictions and coordination between nations because airsheds do not recognize national borders.
Monitoring systems need to be maintained and updated on an ongoing basis. Technology will continuously improve, perhaps changing which policy choices are most cost-effective or even rendering some policy action obsolete. Creation of credible scientific institutes that improve scientific and analytical capacity in South Asia is crucial.
But scientific capacity should not be centralized. It should be distributed across the region. To enhance the credibility and salience of scientific information among the stakeholders of airsheds, and to ensure more equal representation and ownership across countries and jurisdictions, a South Asia–wide scientific community on Air Quality Management should facilitate communication between experts across administrative boundaries and develop a scientific consensus on critical issues.
The capacity of ministries of the environment must be strengthened. These ministries have the principal mandate to manage air quality programs, but they do not have the financial resources nor the staff required for the needed coordination of environmental policies in agriculture, energy, industry, rural development, transportation, and urban development.
Subsidies for fertilizers, another cause of air pollution, should be reconsidered. Fertilizer use should be lowered without compromising productivity. For example, Bangladesh has developed techniques in this area.
Large-scale intensive livestock operations can prevent emissions through the scrubbing of ventilated air both into and out of animal housing areas. Various types of air purification systems exist, including combination filters that remove more than one pollutant. Technology designed to reduce ammonia emissions.
Less-polluting and more viable brick kiln technologies are available but slow in being adopted. Many brick kilns in South Asia are very small units using old technologies, with inefficient combustion of coal and agricultural waste.
Municipal waste management is one of the most cost-effective potential interventions in the region. In many cities in South Asia, no waste collection is performed, and even in cities with high collection rates, segregation of waste and recycling hardly occurs.
Recycling, controlled incineration, composting of biodegradable waste, and managed landfills not only reduce air pollution but also generate revenues by recovering precious or rare earth metals from electronic components.
Taxation of activities that release pollutants will make cleaner technologies more competitive. Likewise, subsidies can encourage the use of clean industries and technologies that do not harm air quality.
Recent evidence from a pilot of permit trading in India is encouraging. The state of Gujarat recently introduced emissions-permit trading among 317 high-polluting plants. A critical precondition for this plan was the installation of a robust monitoring system in the participating firms. The pilot has been evaluated through a randomized control trial, which shows that it reduced emissions significantly and at low-cost, relative to the existing command-and-control regulation.
Revenues from taxes on pollutants or from sales of emissions permits generate the fiscal space to create public funds that support abatement activities. Such funds can play an important role in enticing cooperation within an airshed across jurisdictions.
The synergies between reductions in air pollution and climate change policies can help mobilize international funds. Strong synergies are found between meeting cleaner air targets and meeting commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Those synergies can mobilize international funds that can support Air Quality Management. Some of these funds come from multilateral development banks, scaling up existing programs that link financing to the achievement of air quality improvement targets, the World Bank report says.
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