How to increase life expectancy in India by 4 yrs, Here are recommendations Indians would live a year longer if India were to achieve its national air quality standards, the report said
Provide the public with regular information about polluters and fine industries for emissions that exceed legal limits.These are two of five “evidence-based� recommendations to tackle air pollution across India, according to a 2018 policy brief prepared by researchers of the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago (EPIC) and Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) programme at the Harvard Kennedy School in Boston.The other three: Stop industries from paying supposedly independent laboratories to audit their smokestacks, provide regulators with real-time emissions data and allow industries to trade their emissions, said the brief, released on August 16,
2018.More than 660 million Indians live in areas that exceed the country’s standard (40 µg/m3 annual and 60 µg/m3 for 24 hours) for particulate matter (PM) 2.5, airborne particles 30 times finer than a human hair that can sicken or kill people by entering the lungs.Indians would live a year longer if India were to achieve its national air quality standards; life expectancy would increase by four years if India could meet pollution standards–10 µg/m3, or three times tighter–set by the World Health Organization (WHO), said the brief.India should use monetary penalties against polluting industries. “[This] would increase the flexibility that regulators have in responding to environmental offences, widening the number of polluters facing regulatory action,” said the brief.Indian environmental laws rely on criminal penalties, such as plant closures and investment hold-ups, to keep industries in compliance. These “inflexible regulation” tools lead to action against a fraction of major violators, while many others are let off, the brief said.When you add positive as well as negative incentives, you are more likely to turn industries away from “undesirable actions”, but, “this is entirely absent from India’s policy landscape”, said Pande.More detailed pollution data can lead to steeper fines for greater violations, and “small transgressions” can be “affordable”, Pande said. “The same readings can allow us to reward industries that are emitting below the standard,” she said.Industries should be allowed to trade their emissions, with caps, and trading markets should be established in industrial clusters.Under a cap-and-trade system, aggregate emissions from regulated industries are capped; industries need permits for each unit of emissions; the number of permits is equal to the cap; and industries are allowed to trade permits, said the brief. “The cap-and-trade system allows industries to strike a balance between reducing their own emissions through various abatement measures and purchasing permits,” it said.Under traditional command-and-control regulations, polluters may be willing to trade off the risk of being detected and penalised with the “avoided costs” of compliance, particularly if “abatement costs” are high and enforcement capacity is limited, said the brief.
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