{"id":4477,"date":"2019-11-29T13:45:45","date_gmt":"2019-11-29T13:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/?p=4477"},"modified":"2019-12-02T06:25:05","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T06:25:05","slug":"139-cities-dirty-air-dont-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/story\/4477\/139-cities-dirty-air-dont-care\/","title":{"rendered":"139 CITIES: DIRTY AIR, DON\u2019T CARE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Slamming the centre and state governments\nfor their failure to tackle air pollution, the Supreme Court of India on\nNovember 25th said<\/a>, \u2018The world is\nlaughing at India. It\u2019s better to get explosives in 15 bags and kill them in\none go. Why should people suffer like this?”<\/p>\n\n

India has been facing toxic air pollution\nof unprecedented levels in the past few years. In 2017, one\nin eight deaths<\/a> in India was attributable to air\npollution, with 6.7\nlakh<\/a> deaths caused by outdoor particulate matter air pollution and 4.8\nlakh<\/a> deaths linked to household air pollution. Today, 15\nout of the 20<\/a> most polluted cities in the world are in\nIndia, with Delhi recently topping the list. It\u2019s no wonder that the air is\nheavy with panic and toxins.<\/p>\n\n

The Supreme Court said the Delhi\ngovernment has no right to be in the chair and asked, \u2018How much do you value a\nperson’s life?\u2019. The court stated, \u201cDelhi has become worse than narak <\/em>(hell). Life is not so cheap in\nIndia and you will have to pay\u201d.<\/p>\n\n

To combat this rising threat, the\nMinistry of Environment Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) launched the\nNational Clean Air Programme (NCAP) in January 2019, after years of campaigning\nby Greenpeace and other civil societies. However, this was short-lived relief\nas the laid out plan is not an all-inclusive solution. The NCAP specifies\nsectoral initiatives and offers tentative targets of 20-30% reduction of air\npollution levels by 2024. However, it doesn\u2019t include budgets, legal backing or\nclear sectoral targets to enable states to implement the plan.<\/p>\n\n

Upon analysing the annual air quality data of 313 cities in 2017, we found that 241 cities have ambient particulate matter PM2.5 above 60 micro grams\/m3 – the limit recommended by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). While these 241 cities have insufferable air quality, 139 of those cities are not included under NCAP. This means that they have no plans to combat the menace that\u2019s leading to respiratory, cardiac and other deadly illnesses even in perfectly healthy individuals. Several of these cities even have a population above one million, including Chennai, Madurai, Meerut, Thane, Surat, Rajkot, Vadodara, Howrah, Ranchi, etc.<\/p>\n\n

Our Airpocalypse\nIII report revealed that air pollution in our cities is so high, that even if\nwe reduce air pollution 20-30%\nby 2024<\/a>, only 12 of 241 cities will be within the World\nHealth Organisation\u2019s (WHO) air quality standards. Air pollution across India\nstems from a few key sectors, namely – industries and power plants, crop and\ngarbage burning, and transport. Therefore, stronger sectoral policies and\ntargets are needed at a national and state level. While 30% is a start, we need\nmuch more ambitious reductions and stricter emissions deadlines.<\/p>\n\n

The right to\nbreathe clean air and live free from deadly illnesses caused by air pollution\nis universal. The government must treat this climate and health emergency with\nurgency and take immediate action if we are to prevent a climate catastrophe of\nunimaginable proportions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slamming the centre and state governments for their failure to tackle air pollution, the Supreme Court of India on November 25th said, \u2018The world is laughing at India. It\u2019s better…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":4478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,23],"tags":[60],"p4-page-type":[16],"class_list":["post-4477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clean-energy","category-environment","tag-air-pollution","p4-page-type-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4477"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4485,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4477\/revisions\/4485"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4477"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/india\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=4477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}