The clear and present danger
The United Nations has established that Air Pollution is the single largest environmentally related global health risk of our time, killing approximately 6.5 million people every year. While the World Health Organisation found fourteen of the most polluted cities to be in India, with most finishing on top of the poor air quality charts, a Lancet Planetary Health Journal linked every eighth death in India to air pollution. These are alarming statistics and clearly India has a lot to do. What has got us to this stage and who has been responsible?
Large urban agglomerations have contributed to the current situation we are in. Bengaluru is the third most populous city in India as per 2011 census. It’s home to 20% of the population of Karnataka but contributes to 87% of the economy of the state. A recent study by Indian Institute of Science held one-fifth of the commuters in Bengaluru caused close to half the CO2 emissions in the city. This is a disproportionate adverse impact inflicted by a few on the majority of the citizens in the city. 60% of these trips were work-related commute alone, pointing the finger at the industry for failing to manage the environmental costs of the business. Vehicular pollution has become an unintended consequence of growth and we are only aggravating it by failing to mitigate it.
The economic engine has bred a transport nightmare due to lack of planning and investment in public transport and non-motorised transport infrastructure. Additions to road capacity by the government have induced the addition of more vehicles to the roads. Additions to walking and cycling facilities on the same roads, on the other hand, have not kept pace. With 80 lakh registered vehicles to a 1.2 crore population, Bengaluru has now surpassed Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad to become second only to Delhi in vehicle population says the Transport Commissioner of Karnataka. It might hit one crore in a short span of three years with five to six lakh vehicles getting added to the roads every year. There is no disincentive for an average citizen to rethink his/her choice of buying or plying private motor vehicles in our cities today.
The section most vulnerable to poor air quality are the children and people who walk and bicycle. A recently held Lung Health Screening Test by Heal foundation showed 36% of children in Bengaluru to have either poor or bad lung capacity caused by Air Pollution. This is only slated to get worse; the city’s over-reliance on private vehicles may increase the poor air quality by 70% before 2030, states a recent study by C-STEP. The future generations are dealing with the impact of our choices. It’s time to change this trend by our actions.
The real cost of the economic development to the environment is not going to solve itself. Proactive measures need to start now on a mass scale to solve this collective action problem. The first step is for businesses and civil society to encourage people to switch to environmentally friendly modes like cycling and walking. Incentives like #cycletowork campaigns; provisioning of facilities by corporates to encourage more cycling and public transport; and public transport discounts by the transport companies. It’s important for the government to put in place disincentives like reducing parking availability, introducing parking fees and including congestion pricing. These measures will include the cost of environmental damage to the pricing of transportation facilities and infrastructure. It’s up to the people to demand these measures for their own collective good if we have a hope of solving this problem to any degree. The time to act is now and each of us have a role to play.