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Monitoring the air pollution

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December 14, 2020

What is the issue?

India needs context-specific solutions to tackle the problem of monitoring the air pollution.

What are the steps taken until now?

  • About 250 continuous & 800 ambient air quality monitoring stations are operating across the country.
  • Budget allocation for air pollution was increased significantly in 2020-21 to ensure cleaner air in million plus cities.
  • Commission for Air Quality Management was established which penalises the polluters in the NCR.
  • India has jumped from BSIV to BSVI vehicles & now the focus is shifted towards e-mobility.
  • Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana has increased the LPG coverage in rural areas which has reduced indoor air pollution.

What are the innovations under the process to have cleaner air?

  • Many institutions are involved in the process of developing solutions to combat the air pollution.
  •  Indian Agricultural Research Institute has developed PUSA Bio Decomposer which converts crop residue into manure in 15-20 days.
  • This could be a cost-effective alternative to tackle stubble burning.
  • UNDP promotes start-up led innovations like filter-less retrofit device to cut down the particulate matter at source level.
  • Breathing root technology is developed to improve indoor air quality by purifying the air.
  • UNDP & the University of Nottingham has developed GeoAI platform to identify non-complaint brick kilns.
  • The platform has mapped over 37,000 brick manufacturing units across the Indo-Gangetic plains.

What more needs to be done?

  • Government needs to support the enterprises to come up with scalable pollution abatement technologies.
  • A single window online platform needs to be developed to showcase innovations to mitigate air pollution.
  • This can be done by leveraging digital technologies such as geospatial technology and AI.
  • More resources need to be allocated to support test, certify & scale innovative solutions & to protect intellectual property rights.
  • Private sector needs to innovate their operations, functioning & build emission and pollution controls to reduce carbon footprint.
  • They also have the potential to develop commercially viable products to combat air pollution.
  • An enabling ecosystem for innovations has to be created to address context-specific air pollution challenges.
  • This can be done using the technological, economic, social, legal, educational, political & institutional domains.

 

Source: The Hindu

 

 

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