I am a student in your International Reporting class and I want to cover a story on India’s growing air pollution. Although there have been articles from a vast number of publications addressing this issue, the Indian government doesn’t appear to be doing much about it.
When most people think of air pollution, they think of China. Although China has been the world leader in number of deaths linked to fine particle matter (PM2.5), India is rapidly catching up. As the number of deaths in China stabilizes, the number of deaths in India continues to grow. According to data from the Health Effects Institute, a non-profit that provides relevant science on the health effects of air pollution, the number of PM2.5 caused deaths in China increased by 162,800 from 1990 to 2015. In the same amount of time, the number of PM2.5 caused deaths in India increased by 353,000.
It is not just PM2.5 linked deaths that are increasing either. “On a global basis, the fraction of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) deaths linked to ozone have increased from 5% in 1990 to 8% in 2015. Much of that increase occurred in India.” According to the American Lung association, the ozone layer found in the stratosphere protects us from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, but “ozone air pollution” in the troposphere “causes serious health problems.” Ozone air pollution comes form the burning of fossil fuels and “high-heat combustion” such as burning coal or in using motor vehicles.
As India’s air quality declines, environmental regulations fail to curtail growing pollution. According to The Times of India, two Indians die every minute due to air pollution. Although air pollution is a growing problem, improvement still seems at a far. In India’s submission to the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, it states that coal based power makes up 60.8% of India’s installed capacity. Rather than move away from coal, the goal is to “improve the efficiency of coal based power plants.”
When I interviewed Steven DSouza for my beat memo, he mentioned India’s poor air quality and visible smoke. DSouza also mentioned the lack of regulation and that people continue the practices that they are already doing. An article in the New York Times described this problem in further detail. The article states that although India’s environmental court, “The National Green Tribunal,” ordered the government to stop farmers from burning the straw left from their crops, NASA satellite images show that no progress has been made. Another article in The Times of India cited an important reason as to why farmers are not ceasing this practice, which is that it is still cheaper to buy higher quantities of fertilizer due to subsidies than to purchase a machine that removes the straw.
I want to explore this topic from an international perspective and write a print story.