Way back in 2007 we had said Delhi would wake up that winter to more smog and pollution; more wheeze and asthma. Air pollution was on its way back up. Every winter would turn back the pollution clock. At stake was our health. Newly released official air quality data now reconfirms our worst fears. It is not only Delhi, but other cities as well – Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Kanpur, are climbing the smoggy spikes after a little respite.
This annual elegy on gloom and doom of our air quality and health does not stir up emotions any more. So what if the national averages for tiny particles and nitrogen dioxides are rising; more locations have exceeded the air quality standards; more residential areas have violated standards than industrial areas; more small cities are highly polluted; the numbers of days crossing the permissible limits have increased and so has our daily dose of pollution. The temporary relief enjoyed by some big cities has lulled all into believing that air pollution is not a concern any more. As the visible black smoke recedes with basic technology fix, health threat of air pollution is not obvious to people. The danger of invisible pollution is unclear and leave people confused. Governments find it easy to go slow.
If the health implications of the new pollution data were taken seriously, the ministry of environment and forests would have rushed to dust the rusting notification on the proposed national ambient air quality standards and set new nation-wide air quality targets. After all, the eleventh five year plan, already underway, mandates the central government to set monitorable target of air quality -- achieve the standards of air quality in all major cities by 2011–12. But somehow this has spirited away the will to tighten the targets.
Why are the regulators so uneasy about the proposed air quality standards? The proposal after all upholds protection of peoples’ health over protecting economic interests of the industry. It asks to stop the current practice of keeping standards lenient for the industrial areas. The threshold limits of key pollutants are up for tightening. More pollutants are on the list for monitoring and regulation -- PM2.5, ozone and a range of air toxics and heavy metals. But this has not got the official stamp of approval even after three years.
Is it politically embarrassing for the government to have more cities showing up on the highly polluted list as science tightens the safe threshold of pollution? The revised nitrogen dioxides standards will certainly bring more cities into the bracket of critically polluted as opposed to none now; increase the number of highly polluted cities from 2 to 14 and moderately polluted cities from 32 to 53. Similarly, the number of critically polluted cities for particulate pollution increases to 52 to 63. Tightening of sulphur dioxide standards will hurtle four more cities into moderately polluted class taking the total to 9 cities. Finding money to monitor more pollutants further hassles our regulators.
The environment ministry could downplay this issue so easily because our air quality policies are cut off from the reported reality in the Indian health sector today. The health ministry has already warned in its eleventh five year plan that India is experiencing a rapid epidemiological transition, with a large and rising burden of chronic diseases, estimated to be more than half of all deaths and 44% of disability adjusted life Years lost. Non-communicable diseases especially cancer, stroke, and chronic lung diseases are now major public health problems. “Environmentally-driven changes” are amongst the key reasons.
Indian Council of Medical Research has just let out the shocking fact after tracking the deadly cancer trend over 24 years. India will see a 20% overall increase in additional cases of cancer every year by 2020. In absolute numbers, lung cancer will top the list with new cases annually by 2020.
This has not impelled any thorough official review to weigh up the association between these dreadful diseases and toxic air. There is barely any regular central funding of any reasonable scale for health risk assessment of air pollution. State level studies and research are even more sporadic. Yet Indian Council on Medical Research and similar research bodies are officially expected to include in their research agenda that future improvements in health and well-being will depend on research that “increases understanding of environmental determinants of health”.
We only rely on the voluntary efforts of enterprising researchers and doctors for local evidences, and human stories of illness to charge up action. Though health effects of pollution have been thoroughly looked into in the West, showing significant harmful effects at levels substantially lower than those found in our cities, our policies are insular to such data. These are not used by our regulators to warn people about severe risks of pollution episodes, or speed up pollution emergency action.
Our air pollution policies do not even pretend to protect all people from continuous exposure to pollutants. The official action on some of the fastest growing pollution sources like vehicles even limits the scope of protection -- the tighter Euro IV standards for vehicles will benefit only a quarter of the urban population in 2010. Imagine the state of our urban poor, nearly a quarter to half of the population in cities breathing smoke from their stoves as well as toxic fumes from rich people’s vehicles. Poor are too poor to buy cleaner fuels and too poor to treat their diseases. But their daily dose of toxins is increasing. The proposed ambient air quality standards if enforced with enforceable targets would at least raise the bar of public health protection for large majority of city dwellers.
It is clear India will not speed up air pollution action if public health loses priority. Change was possible in some cities because health worries moved action. But our government and the scientific community fail to fulfill their obligation and responsibility to speak out on public health and mandate enforcement of stringent air quality targets in cities.
Our polluted cities need the central and the state governments to give them enforceable regulatory and fiscal framework to assess risks and to act. They cannot cope with toxic air on their own let alone assess the health risks. They also do not have powers to set emissions standards, nor the resources to transform transport infrastructure or phase in clean vehicles and fuels to protect public health. They will have to be enabled.
Our losing pollution battle challenges our elementary lessons about economic growth and affluence putting cities on continuous path of air quality improvement, cutting local environmental risks. Our risk curve certainly looks odd as our gains are so easily reversible. The government's inability to prioritize air pollution hazards and the incapacity to act on the health information has slowed down clean technology and sustainable mobility pathways in India. Who will invest in our health?
Friday, November 6, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
obama..time for moving beyond rhetoric
AS THE U.S. war on Afghanistan begins its ninth year, Barack Obama--who won the votes of millions of people because he seemed to be the "peace candidate" in last year's election--is poised to further escalate the war.
The contrast between rhetoric and reality could not have been starker. Within days of the announcement that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama was discussing a drastic increase in the number of troops in Afghanistan. Press reports indicated that the administration was debating whether to add 40,000 U.S. troops to the 68,000 who are already in Afghanistan--but 80,000 more is the number that Gen. Stanley McChrystal is aiming for.
White House officials signaled that they may put off the decision until Afghanistan's election crisis is resolved. The United Nations commission that investigated the disputed August 20 elections threw out nearly one-third of ballots claimed by President Hamid Karzai as fraudulent. That pushed Karzai into a runoff against the second-place finisher, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah--though Karzai resisted this and only accepted a second election after a lot of diplomatic pressure.
The U.S. wanted Karzai to back down. Appearing on CBS's Face the Nation, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel stressed that the U.S. would need a "credible Afghan partner" before making a decision on a surge of troops.
The U.S. war and occupation in Afghanistan is a disaster, and the Obama administration is scrambling for answers. But the debate in Washington has been relegated to how, not whether, to continue the war in Afghanistan. Any talk of a withdrawal is off the table.
From Dianne Feinstein to Joe Lieberman to Lindsay Graham, U.S. lawmakers all claim that if the U.S. withdraws, Afghanistan will be left to the Taliban to take over, and al-Qaeda and "jihadists" everywhere will gain a vital foothold.
As Obama told a crowd of military service members in August, "[W]e must never forget. This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again."
Unlike Bush's war in Iraq--which Obama criticized on the campaign trail as a distraction from the "real" war on terrorism--Afghanistan is the war the U.S. must win, the argument goes. "We are here in Afghanistan because people attacked us [from] here in the most significant attack against the United States since Pearl Harbor," Sen. John Kerry--who has said that he opposes sending additional troops to Afghanistan--told CNN during a visit to Kabul. "We are here because there are still people at large who are plotting against the United States of America."
But the longer U.S. troops stay, the more unstable Afghanistan becomes, and the more the Taliban may look like an alternative to the victims of the U.S. war.
The U.S.'s grand promises of bringing liberation and democracy to Afghans were left behind long ago. Today, the population continues to live with dire poverty and the daily brutalities of war. The Defense Department's own report, released in January and titled "Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan," estimates unemployment rates in Afghanistan at 40 percent, with over 50 percent of the population living below the poverty line.
It's also worth pointing out that some of the old methods the Bush administration used to rationalize its invasion of Iraq--linking everything and everyone to potential terrorism against the U.S.--are being used by the Obama administration today.
For instance, Washington politicians claim that if U.S. troops were to leave, the Taliban would allow al-Qaeda back into Afghanistan. But this scenario is greatly overstated. Gareth Porter, writing for Inter Press Service, cites two former senior intelligence analysts who argue that the Taliban has much less cooperation with al-Qaeda than before the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S.--because the Taliban blames its previous alliance with al-Qaeda for its ouster from power.
John McCreary, formerly a senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, wrote, "The premise that Afghanistan would become an al-Qaeda safe haven under any future government is alarmist and bespeaks a lack of understanding of the Pashtuns on this issue and a superficial knowledge of recent Afghan history."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
RATHER THAN representing a significant break with the Bush administration's foreign policy aims, Obama's war in Afghanistan represents a continuation of past U.S. foreign policy. As Andrew Bacevich wrote in the Boston Globe on October 11:
If the president assents to McChrystal's request, he will void his promise of change, at least so far as national security policy is concerned. The Afghanistan war will continue until the end of his first term and probably beyond. It will consume hundreds of billions of dollars. It will result in hundreds or perhaps thousands more American combat deaths--costs that the hawks are loath to acknowledge.
It is essential for opponents of U.S. wars to challenge the ongoing U.S. war in Afghanistan. Washington's occupation only makes it more difficult for the people of Afghanistan--and anywhere the U.S. decides to intervene--to rule their own countries.
As the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan said in a statement sent to international antiwar activists:
Afghan people and especially its women are still living in disastrous conditions under the occupation forces and its puppet regime which is full of many criminal warlords who have been responsible for war crimes and brutalities against Afghan people.
Afghan people know very well that the so-called war on terror is a hoax and a dirty game played by big powers led by the U.S. government. So they reject this occupation. We want liberation and democracy and an end to this occupation. We know no nation will liberate another nation; it is the obligation of our own people to fight for their liberation...
Please continue your antiwar efforts, and voice your opposition to the wrong policies of your government and stop Obama from sending more troops to Afghanistan because it will bring more sufferings and civilian deaths to our country.
The contrast between rhetoric and reality could not have been starker. Within days of the announcement that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama was discussing a drastic increase in the number of troops in Afghanistan. Press reports indicated that the administration was debating whether to add 40,000 U.S. troops to the 68,000 who are already in Afghanistan--but 80,000 more is the number that Gen. Stanley McChrystal is aiming for.
White House officials signaled that they may put off the decision until Afghanistan's election crisis is resolved. The United Nations commission that investigated the disputed August 20 elections threw out nearly one-third of ballots claimed by President Hamid Karzai as fraudulent. That pushed Karzai into a runoff against the second-place finisher, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah--though Karzai resisted this and only accepted a second election after a lot of diplomatic pressure.
The U.S. wanted Karzai to back down. Appearing on CBS's Face the Nation, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel stressed that the U.S. would need a "credible Afghan partner" before making a decision on a surge of troops.
The U.S. war and occupation in Afghanistan is a disaster, and the Obama administration is scrambling for answers. But the debate in Washington has been relegated to how, not whether, to continue the war in Afghanistan. Any talk of a withdrawal is off the table.
From Dianne Feinstein to Joe Lieberman to Lindsay Graham, U.S. lawmakers all claim that if the U.S. withdraws, Afghanistan will be left to the Taliban to take over, and al-Qaeda and "jihadists" everywhere will gain a vital foothold.
As Obama told a crowd of military service members in August, "[W]e must never forget. This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again."
Unlike Bush's war in Iraq--which Obama criticized on the campaign trail as a distraction from the "real" war on terrorism--Afghanistan is the war the U.S. must win, the argument goes. "We are here in Afghanistan because people attacked us [from] here in the most significant attack against the United States since Pearl Harbor," Sen. John Kerry--who has said that he opposes sending additional troops to Afghanistan--told CNN during a visit to Kabul. "We are here because there are still people at large who are plotting against the United States of America."
But the longer U.S. troops stay, the more unstable Afghanistan becomes, and the more the Taliban may look like an alternative to the victims of the U.S. war.
The U.S.'s grand promises of bringing liberation and democracy to Afghans were left behind long ago. Today, the population continues to live with dire poverty and the daily brutalities of war. The Defense Department's own report, released in January and titled "Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan," estimates unemployment rates in Afghanistan at 40 percent, with over 50 percent of the population living below the poverty line.
It's also worth pointing out that some of the old methods the Bush administration used to rationalize its invasion of Iraq--linking everything and everyone to potential terrorism against the U.S.--are being used by the Obama administration today.
For instance, Washington politicians claim that if U.S. troops were to leave, the Taliban would allow al-Qaeda back into Afghanistan. But this scenario is greatly overstated. Gareth Porter, writing for Inter Press Service, cites two former senior intelligence analysts who argue that the Taliban has much less cooperation with al-Qaeda than before the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S.--because the Taliban blames its previous alliance with al-Qaeda for its ouster from power.
John McCreary, formerly a senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, wrote, "The premise that Afghanistan would become an al-Qaeda safe haven under any future government is alarmist and bespeaks a lack of understanding of the Pashtuns on this issue and a superficial knowledge of recent Afghan history."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
RATHER THAN representing a significant break with the Bush administration's foreign policy aims, Obama's war in Afghanistan represents a continuation of past U.S. foreign policy. As Andrew Bacevich wrote in the Boston Globe on October 11:
If the president assents to McChrystal's request, he will void his promise of change, at least so far as national security policy is concerned. The Afghanistan war will continue until the end of his first term and probably beyond. It will consume hundreds of billions of dollars. It will result in hundreds or perhaps thousands more American combat deaths--costs that the hawks are loath to acknowledge.
It is essential for opponents of U.S. wars to challenge the ongoing U.S. war in Afghanistan. Washington's occupation only makes it more difficult for the people of Afghanistan--and anywhere the U.S. decides to intervene--to rule their own countries.
As the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan said in a statement sent to international antiwar activists:
Afghan people and especially its women are still living in disastrous conditions under the occupation forces and its puppet regime which is full of many criminal warlords who have been responsible for war crimes and brutalities against Afghan people.
Afghan people know very well that the so-called war on terror is a hoax and a dirty game played by big powers led by the U.S. government. So they reject this occupation. We want liberation and democracy and an end to this occupation. We know no nation will liberate another nation; it is the obligation of our own people to fight for their liberation...
Please continue your antiwar efforts, and voice your opposition to the wrong policies of your government and stop Obama from sending more troops to Afghanistan because it will bring more sufferings and civilian deaths to our country.
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