Context: The Centre’s ambitious attempt to improve air quality in some of India’s most polluted cities suggests that a majority of Indian cities are far from making significant progress.
National Clean Air Programme
- It was launched by the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change in 2019.
- It is a long term, time bound, national level strategy to tackle air pollution problems across the country in a comprehensive manner.
- The aim is to improve air quality in 131 cities (non-attainment cities and million plus cities) in 24 states/UTs by engaging all stakeholders.
Targets: Initially the target is to achieve a 20% to 30% reduction of PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations by the year 2024, keeping base year as 2017 for comparison of concentrations.
- The new target is to achieve reductions of PM10 concentration up to 40% or achievement of National Ambient Air Quality standards for PM10 by 2025-2026 (Base year 2017).
Objective of NCAP:
- To ensure stringent implementation of mitigation measures for prevention, control, and abatement of air pollution.
- Effective and proficient ambient air quality monitoring network across the country for ensuring a comprehensive and reliable database.
- To augment public awareness and capacity-building measures for inclusive public participation and for ensuring trained manpower and infrastructure on air pollution.
Portal for monitoring
PRANA” – Portal for Regulation of Air-pollution in non-attainment cities, is a portal for monitoring of implementation of National Clean Air Programme (NCAP).
- It will support tracking of physical as well as financial status of city air action plan implementation.
- It will disseminate information on air quality management efforts under NCAP to the public.
Status of implementation
- Delhi has seen an average annual decline of PM 2.5 levels by 5.9%.
- Navi Mumbai has seen a 46% rise in PM 2.5 levels.
- Varanasi witnessed 72% average reduction in PM 2.5 levels and 69% reduction in PM 10 levels.
- Respirer Living Sciences and Climate Trends, analysed 49 cities whose data are available for 5 years shows that,
- 27 cities showed a decline in PM2.5 level.
- Only 4 had met or exceeded the target.