Better air and transport are UN goals for 2030

Improving air quality and sustainable transport will be one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals for the world to meet by 2030, a top United Nations official said on Wednesday.

Updated on: Nov 20, 2014, 24:22:51 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Colombo

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Improving air quality and sustainable transport will be one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the world to meet by 2030, a top United Nations official said on Wednesday. He added that the new goals would be finalised at the next UN general assembly meeting in September 2015.

The SDGs having 169 targets under these goals will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ending next year and aims at put the world on a path of low carbon growth aimed at reducing global warming causing carbon emissions and creating new job in clean technology sector.

Rising air pollution has found attention of the global leaders with the World Health Organisation’s latest report saying that particulate matter pollution of 2.5 micrograms was rising in most of the 1,600 cities and the US based Health Effects Institute claiming that 7 million people died because of air pollution in 2010.

A large number of these deaths were estimated in the emerging economies like India and China because of rapid economic growth without adequate measures to check deteriorating air quality. In India, just a couple of 250 cities monitored by the Central Pollution Control Board has pollution level within the permissible limit and the last decade has witnessed a quantum jump in the pollution load.

“By September 2015, we will definitely have reducing air pollution and sustainable transport as a goal under SDG,” Nikhil Seth, who heads the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said in his keynote address at Better Air Quality conference in which delegates from major Asian countries participated.

About half of the world’s investments in clean technologies was happening in Asia with the developed world willing to invest for the low carbon pathways.

(The author’s visit to Colombo was sponsored by Clean Air Asia)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Follow India news real-time updates and the latest news covered on Hindustan Times, featuring today's critical updates on Sonam Wangchuk LIVE and more across India.