In India, air pollution is seen as a city problem, and thus, city remedies have been created. Rural initiatives to improve air quality are glaringly absent.
Air pollution affects entire districts and states, spanning rural and urban areas. But this is rarely highlighted,
Pollution in rural places
- Indoor air pollution is the area where rural residents are most disadvantaged compared to urban residents. Solid fuel usage persists in rural families, disproportionately affecting women and children.
- Most heavy businesses today operate in rural areas, polluting the surrounding populace with hazardous air and effluent.
- According to investigations by Delhi’s Centre for Science and Environment, some rural power stations are also non-compliant.
- According to the Energy and Resources Institute’s national air pollution inventory, open burning of agricultural residue provides roughly 7% of total PM2.5 emissions.
- India’s agriculture is a rich source of reactive nitrogen, as plants only take up 30% of the The rest goes into the air, land, and water.
Challenges
- The National Ambient Monitoring Programme contains 804 manual and 274 real-time Most are in Tier-1 cities, with a few in Tier-2.
- Rural locations lack real-time monitoring. Arunachal Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Manipur also lack real-time monitoring
- Pradhan LPG costs are a key disincentive to adoption and even in houses where LPG is used, fuel stacking—using biomass fuels alongside LPG—is
- The energy ladder hypothesis—Households shift towards contemporary energy sources as money rises—is often untrue in rural
Contingency plans
- Include rural locations in the surveillance
- Prepare a plan for addressing existing emission norm violations.
- Adopting clean cooking fuels in remote
Legacy Editor Changed status to publish July 11, 2023