Access to information: vital to improve environmental quality

In recent weeks there has been considerable discussion on the state of air pollution in the city of Delhi. CPCB (The Central Pollution Control Board) which uses the monitoring station located at the ITO crossing as an indicator of air quality in the city as a whole has put forward the claim that air quality, based on the measurements carried out at this location, has improved substantially. As opposed to this TERI has collated data available from 7 stations at which air quality is monitored by the CPCB and 11 stations, which TERI manages independently, to come up with a very different conclusion. TERI?s analysis indicates that over the past few months there has been no appreciable decline in air pollution, and the changes that are apparent between April and May of this year versus the same period last year are accounted for by substantially higher rainfall, which has been a 180% higher and spread over a much larger number of days this year as opposed to the same period in 2000. Irrespective of the numbers, in this dispute the important question to be addressed is the adequacy and access questions related to air pollution in Delhi and many other parts of the country. For a city as large as Delhi, monitoring air quality at one single location and deriving conclusions therefrom is clearly not adequate. Ideally a set of mobile vans that could monitor air quality at different locations during periods of traffic congestion as well as relatively easy flows might be the best arrangement for mapping air quality in different parts of the city at different times. It would be necessary to make this information accessible and available to the public as a whole without delay, so that the right actions can be taken for controlling air pollution and ensuring that it remains within acceptable limits across time and space. For this reason, perhaps a multiplicity of agencies would be desirable for carrying out this task. Government bodies should ideally contract this work out to the right institutions, and concern themselves mainly with carrying out proper quality checks and scrutinizing the value of the data collected and analysis carried out from time to time. What applies to air pollution is relevant for other forms of pollution as well. A very different approach is perhaps required for ensuring that the right information is available at the right time in the public domain for civil society to get involved in bringing about improvements in environmental quality and minimizing the pollution related damage to human health and economic activities in general.