Most of clean air funding went to dust management: CSE

NCAP focuses on road dust mitigation to reduce particulate pollution nationally in 131 cities, with limited funding for combustion sources emitting pollutants.

New Delhi: Road dust mitigation has been the primary focus of the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), which was launched in 2019 as the first such effort to set clean air targets for 131 polluted cities and to reduce particulate pollution nationally, with much lower funding for combustion sources that emit pollutants, a Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) assessment released on Friday has found.

Most of clean air funding went to dust management: CSE

As much as 64% of the total funds ( ₹10,566 crore) has gone into road paving, widening, pothole repair, water sprinkling, mechanical sweepers, etc. Only 14.51% of funding has been used for controlling biomass burning, 12.63% for reducing vehicular pollution and a mere 0.61% for controlling industrial pollution.

“The primary focus of the funding is thus road dust mitigation,” the assessment said.

NCAP is aimed at reducing particulate pollution by up to 40% by 2025-26 from the base year of 2019-20. It is first ever performance-linked funding programme to improve air quality in India.

NCAP was originally planned to tackle both PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations in the 131 non-attainment cities. In practice, only PM10 concentration has been considered for performance assessment. PM2.5, the more harmful fraction and emitted largely from combustion sources, has been neglected, CSE found.

₹19,711 crore has been earmarked for 131 cities for the period of FY 2019–20 to 2025–26, as per the 2023–24 ministry of environment, forest and climate change report. Out of this, about ₹3,172 crore has been allocated to 82 cities under the NCAP and about ₹16,539 crore to 42 million-plus cities and 7 urban agglomerations.

Approximately ₹10,566.47 crore was released to the 131 cities between FY 2019–20 and FY 2023–24 (until 03 May 2024) under both NCAP programme and Fifteenth Finance Commission (XV-FC) grants.

CSE director general Sunita Narain said “NCAP’s objectives and aims have always been commendable, but attention and investments under it are largely focused on dust control, and not on emission-spewing combustion sources such as industries or vehicles...” she said.

Though the criteria for performance assessment have been evolving over time, currently it requires cities to demonstrate improvement only in PM10 levels which are coarse, pollution particles-- mainly dust. Additionally, XV-FC cities must also show an increase in the number of good air days (AQI below 200). This is leading to a stagnation in spending by cities because funding is also linked to performance of states .

“Tying up such enormous amount of funds only for road dust control can make the interventions for controlling toxic emissions from combustion sources sub-optimal,” the report said.

Under-utilization of funds

The 82 NCAP cities have utilized only 51% of the funding allocated to them. The 42 cities and seven urban agglomerations have utilized about 67 % of the funding available to them for air pollution control.

Under NCAP funding during 2019–24, out of the 23 states, Jharkhand, Gujarat and Chandigarh have utilized over 90% of the funds, whereas Meghalaya, Assam, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Punjab and Delhi have utilized the least, under 40%. Under the XV-FC grant, four states— Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have utilised 80% of funds allocated. Three states— Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka—show less than 40% utilization. States at the lower end of the spending spectrum (below 60%) are largely the states in the north or the Indo-Gangetic Plain that also face the most lethal pollution problem, CSE has flagged.

PM2.5 should be the benchmark, CSE recommends

Taking PM10 as the basis for assessing air quality improvement has diverted attention and investments towards dust control. “Annual changes in PM10 levels can be significantly influenced by meteorological factors, dust storms and heatwaves, rather than just policy actions. This may not adequately mirror the impact of action across all key sectors. PM10 monitoring needs to be source specific,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director, CSE. A study published in the Lancet Planetary Health on July 4 found that even levels of air pollution below current Indian air quality standards lead to increased daily mortality rates in India. The researchers found that local combustion sources of air pollution such as waste burning and vehicular emissions among others had heightened health impacts. CSE has recommended that PM2.5 is a more relevant health indicator to assess improvement in air quality.

Currently, cities ranked high for improving PM10 levels may not necessarily rank high for taking policy action, the assessment has highlighted.

Apart from NCAP, there is yet another parallel programme of the Centre, Swachh Vayu Survekshan (SVS) that was introduced by the MoEFCC in 2022 to rank cities based on the level of policy measures implemented. These cities classified based on population are ranked based on policy measures implemented across various interventions such as managing biomass, municipal solid waste, road dust, dust from construction and demolition waste, vehicular and industrial emissions and other emissions.

Cities that score high for good action under SVS can paradoxically be the worst performing cities for not improving PM10 concentration under NCAP, CSE has found. Delhi for example ranked 9th under SVS for implementing policy measures but is at the bottom, scoring zero, under NCAP assessment for not improving PM10 levels.

Key combustion sources neglected

With the current focus on dust control, the key combustion sources including transport and industry do not receive priority. “Due to city-specific action and a ‘hard line’ drawn around municipal boundaries, most industrial sources and power plants remain outside the orbit of city action plans. The small and medium scale units that exist in the non-conforming areas of cities are often not considered. Industrial pollution control remains business-as-usual,” CSE has underlined.

Progress reports of cities are also minimal on the indicators developed by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) for transport sector interventions requiring improvement in on-road emissions management, old vehicle phase-out, vehicle electrification, public transport improvement, non-motorised transport and parking policy as a demand management measure. These strategies are not well developed quantitatively and qualitatively for implementation, funding and reporting.

The experience so far has shown that cities cannot meet their clean air benchmark alone and need a regional approach to reduce the influence of transboundary pollution. Though the NCAP programme has taken this on board to target the Indo-Gangetic Plains with an airshed approach, inter-state coordination framework is yet to develop, CSE assessment said.

MoEFCC did not respond immediately to queries from HT.

...