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| '800,000 may be dying every year due to unclean air' |
| BS Reporter / New Delhi Nov 23, 2009, 00:56 IST |
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Unclean air and water may be causing over 8,00,000 premature deaths in the country each year and morbidity costs amounting to 3.6 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
This implies that the quality of environmental services – access to clean drinking water and sanitation, control of air and water pollution, provision of clean energy sources for cooking and lighting, and management of industrial and household wastes – has a direct bearing on the health and well-being of people, according to the ‘Green India 2047’ report prepared by The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), that deals with issues of depletion of resources like water, forests, land and soil, as well as biodiversity.
The report says environmental governance in India has been restricted to judicial intervention. This has improved environmental justice but can’t be an alternative forum of policy evolution. “About 45 per cent of the population does not have access to safe drinking water and the air quality is poor in most of the cities in the country, with almost 85 per cent of cities having violated the standard for respirable suspended particulate matter in 2007,” notes the report.
Teri has also found that pollution control boards are undermined by low priority and limited resources. In terms of environmental federalism in the country, there is a bias towards higher levels of government in distribution of legislative, administrative and fiscal powers.
The report suggests a need to improve irrigation efficiency, especially groundwater, through water audits and rationalisation of water rates and pollution charges.
Water use in the country is inefficient, with irrigation efficiencies of only 25-35 per cent.
As for forest resources, 21 per cent of the geographical area is under forest cover but over 40 per cent of that area is degraded. Climate change is likely to impact both the quality of forests and livelihoods of forest-dependent communities.
On indoor air pollution, the report says: “Even with the emphasis on rural electrification, it is expected that at least 30 million households would be using kerosene by 2012 and 85 per cent of rural households continue to depend on firewood and cow dung as a primary source of fuel for cooking.”
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