Publication Type: Journal articles

Tackling the health burden of air pollution in South Asia

Summary

Air pollution exposure is the second most important risk factor for ill health in South Asia, contributing to between 13% and 21.7% of all deaths and approximately 58 million disability adjusted life years (DALYs) through chronic and acute respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses.1 Of the top 30 cities in the world with the poorest air quality in 2016, 17 are in South Asia.2 The impact of air pollution transcends boundaries. The “brown cloud”—caused by pollution from carbon aerosols—is a phenomenon captured in satellite images of atmospheric haze over South Asia, as well as China. South Asia has one of the highest concentrations of black carbon emissions from cars and trucks, cooking stoves, and industrial facilities. In addition to their effect on health, black carbon particles are a short lived climate pollutant with a possible impact on precipitation patterns and on the Himalayan glacier system, which threatens water resources in the region.3

Collective regional action to monitor air quality and implement evidence based policies and interventions is needed. While countries have introduced promising initiatives in recent years, comprehensive health centred strategies are lacking. We present the status of air pollution and health effects in South Asia, and propose urgent, concerted action across sectors to achieve recommended air quality standards for the people of the region.

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Trump’s Toxic Announcement on Climate Change

Introduction

President Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States will exit from the Paris Agreement betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the agreement works. It also goes against long-agreed climate principles, and is blind to emergent clean energy trends. In practical terms, the US had activated a rollback of mitigation policies and contributions to climate finance prior to this announcement. Until there are changes in domestic US climate politics—of which there are positive signs—the US cannot be regarded a reliable partner for global climate cooperation.

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Redefining public health leadership in the sustainable development goal era

Abstract

Adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by member states of the United Nations (UN) has set a new agenda for public health action at national and global levels. The changed context calls for a reframing of what constitutes effective leadership in public health, through a construct that reflects the interdependence of leadership at multiple levels across the health system and its partners in other sectors. This is especially important in the context of Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) that are facing complex demographic and epidemiological transitions. The health system needs to exercise leadership that effectively mobilises all its resources for maximising health impact, and channels trans-disciplinary learning into well-coordinated multi-sectoral action on the wider determinants of health. Leadership is essential not only at the level of inspirational individuals who can create collective vision and commitment but also at the level of supportive institutions situated in or aligned to the health system. In turn, the health system as a whole has to exercise leadership that advances public health in the framework of sustainable development. This commentary examines the desirable attributes of effective leadership at each of these levels and explores the nature of their inter-dependence.

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Evolution of Institutions for Climate Policy in India

Introduction

The growing focus on climate policy in India is not matched by an equivalent level of attention to institutions . Effective institutions are also needed for the design, coordination and implementation of policy. This paper examines the functioning of institutions, organised around three periods: pre-2007; 2007 to 2009 and 2010 to mid-2014. Several key themes emerge: First, the formation of climate institutions has often been ad hoc and is inadequately geared to India’s co-benefits based approach to climate policy. Second, there is a lack of continuity in institutions, once established. Third, coordination across government has been uneven and episodic. Fourth, while various efforts at knowledge generation have been attempted, they do not add up to a mechanism for sustained and consistent strategic thinking on climate change. Fifth, the overall capacity within government remains limited. Sixth, capacity shortfalls are exacerbated by closed structures of governance that only partially draw on external expertise.

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State-led experimentation or centrally-motivated replication? A study of state action plans on climate change in India

Summary

In 2009, the Government of India asked all Indian states and Union Territories to prepare State Action Plans on Climate Change, making it one of the largest efforts at sub-national climate planning globally. Through an examination of state climate plans in five Indian states, the paper explores the implications of sub-national climate measures by examining two questions: First, how do state action plans on climate change link with India’s national and international climate efforts in the context of multi-level governance of climate change? Second, do these plans serve as laboratories of experimentation in addressing climate change? Through an empirically driven inductive analysis, the paper argues that because state climate plans, at least in the initial stages, followed a centrally driven, and sometimes ambiguous agenda, their scope and room to experiment was circumscribed. While they did initiate a process and a conversation, the scope and impact of the plans was limited because they tended to follow conventional bureaucratic planning processes and were limited by a central mandate. The plan process did create some space for local innovation, particularly by enterprising bureaucrats, but this was limited by both restricted space and time for innovation. As a result, the plans made only initial steps toward bringing climate-resilient sustainability to the forefront of state development planning. There is however scope for improvement as states and stakeholders begin examining the plans with a view to implement recommendations, finance projects and even consider fresh iterations.

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Towards Methodologies for Multiple Objective-Based Energy and Climate Policy

Introduction

Planning for India’s energy future requires addressing multiple and simultaneous economic, social and environmental challenges. While there has been conceptual progress towards harnessing their synergies, there are limited methodologies available for operationalising a multiple objective framework for development and climate policy. This paper proposes a “multi-criteria decision analysis” approach to this problem, using illustrative examples from the cooking and buildings sectors. An MCDA approach enables policy processes that are analytically rigorous, participative and transparent, which are required to address India’s complex energy and climate challenges.

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Neither Brake Nor Accelerator: Assessing India’s Climate Contribution

Summary

What does India’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution imply for its approach to climate negotiations? And what implications does it have for domestic development choices? This article examines India’s INDC through each lens, to understand the implied logic with regard to India’s complex climate-development choices, and with regard to its strategic international choices. It finds that the INDC reflects, as yet, an inadequate consideration of the climate and development linkages that should inform India’s actions. The contribution reflects a strategic choice to be “middle of the road,” which neither disrupts the fragile diplomatic consensus nor creates pressure for more urgent global action.

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Integrating Global Climate Change Mitigation Goals with Other Sustainability Objectives: A Synthesis

Introduction

Achieving a truly sustainable energy transition requires progress across multiple dimensions beyond climate change mitigation goals. This article reviews and synthesizes results from disparate strands of literature on the coeffects of mitigation to inform climate policy choices at different governance levels. The literature documents many potential cobenefits of mitigation for nonclimate objectives, such as human health and energy security, but little is known about their overall welfare implications. Integrated model studies highlight that climate policies as part of well-designed policy packages reduce the overall cost of achieving multiple sustainability objectives. The incommensurability and uncertainties around the quantification of coeffects become, however, increasingly pervasive the more the perspective shifts from sectoral and local to economy wide and global, the more objectives are analyzed, and the more the results are expressed in economic rather than nonmonetary terms. Different strings of evidence highlight the role and importance of energy demand reductions for realizing synergies across multiple sustainability objectives.

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Reforming the liability regime for air pollution in India

Abstract

The recent uproar about the toxic levels of pollution in the country’s national capital region has once again brought to fore the failure of the regulatory and legal mechanisms in India to control air pollution. According to a World Health Organisation study released in 2014, 13 of the top 20 cities world-wide with the worst quality of air are Indian cities. For decades now the worsening quality of air across the country has been a cause for serious concern; yet the Central and State governments have not been able to contain it. In fact in many ways, governments have not only condoned instances of aggravated pollution, but have also actively permitted pollution to rapidly increase by granting approvals to polluting industries, not taking measures to effectively control vehicular and industrial pollution, and by practically ignoring significant sources of pollution like building construction and diesel generators.
 

Legislative acknowledgement of the problem of air pollution, and the need to tackle it, came more than three decades ago when the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981 [‘the Air Act’] was passed by the Parliament. But this early acknowledgment of the problem, and regulatory mechanisms set up consequently, have not been able to restrict the sharp upward trajectory of air provisions – encapsulating both criminal liability under the Air Act, the Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure as well as civil liability under the National Green Tribunal Act 2010 and the Code of Civil Procedure. It does not, however, discuss the rights-based jurisprudence that has evolved from judgments of the Supreme Court and the High Courts (arising primarily under their writ jurisdiction) recognising a right to pollution free air. A writ remedy is a constitutional remedy and available notwithstanding statutory limitations. It is however a discretionary remedy, and courts are generally reluctant to entertain cases if alternative efficacious remedies are available under other statutory provisions.
 
The essay is divided into three parts. The first part discusses the relevant provisions of the law pertaining to liability for causing air pollution. The second part identifies three critical issues that have emerged in the current liability regime. The third and final part proposes a way forward.

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