Innovations to curb air pollution
Air pollution becoming a major issue to human life as well as living world. Air pollution affects everyone, rich or poor, old or young, man or woman, urban or rural. It’s a problem that cannot be dealt with in isolation, the solutions need to correspond to varied causes of air pollution. It is important to have systemic changes at the policy and strategy levels to curb air pollution in India.
Air quality monitoring System
The Air quality monitoring system is the systematic, long-term assessment of pollutant levels by measuring the quantity and types of certain pollutants in the surrounding, outdoor air. The monitoring helps in assessing the level of pollution in relation to ambient air quality standards. Robust monitoring helps to guard against extreme events by alerting people and initiate action. There are more than 250 continuous ambient air quality monitoring stations and more than 800 ambient air quality monitoring stations operating across the country.
Government initiatives to combat air pollution
- A long-term, time-bound, national-level strategy to tackle the increasing air pollution problem across the country in a comprehensive manner. The total tentative cost of NCAP is estimated at Rs 637 crore.
- Union Budget 2020-21 allocated Rs.4400 crore for cities having populations above one million to formulating and implementing plans for ensuring cleaner air.
- A new ordinance to form a commission for air-quality management in the National Capital Region (NCR) and adjoining areas.
- This erases all other authorities that were set up under judicial and administrative orders, seeks to limit the role of the judiciary and creates a supra-centralized framework for air-quality management in the region.
- The government has taken various other initiatives to address the issues related to air pollution such as the National Clean Air Program, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana and the Bharat Stage-VI (BS-VI) emission norms.
The new innovations to curb air pollution
Some of new innovations to curb air pollution are mentioned below-
- PUSA bio-decomposer: Pusa bio-decomposer is a solution developed by the scientists at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa, which can turn crop residue into manure in 15 to 20 days and therefore, can prevent stubble burning.
- Filter-less retrofit device: For cutting particulate matter at source in industries and vehicles.
- A nature-based solution to amplify air purification through breathing roots technology for improving indoor air quality.
- Geospatial technology and AI- To upgrade capacities to identify, monitor, regulate and mitigate air pollution hotspots.
Conclusion
The new budgetary step, which is also a tacit political acknowledgement of the public health emergency, has to gather momentum to step up fiscal solutions for killer air. India needs context-specific innovations not only in the technological but also in the economic, social, legal, educational, political and institutional domains to mitigate the challenges of air pollution. The private sector has strong potential to develop commercially viable products to combat air pollution and boost the innovation ecosystem.
