India’s air quality way off WHO markers, need to scale up LPG subsidy scheme: UN body official

New Delhi: India’s air quality is far short of WHO standards and more than 40 percent of its population still relies on biomass fuels, leading to deaths every year, an official from the United Nations body has said.

In an interview with PTI Videos, Dr Maria Neira, Director of the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health at WHO, urged the Indian authorities to scale up existing programmes, particularly those aimed at reducing household air pollution caused by the use of biomass fuels for cooking.

“We need to consider programmes like providing access to LPG and subsidies, but of course, the effort has to be not only maintained but probably scaled up,” Neira said.

“As per a think tank report, 41 per cent of Indian households still rely on biomass fuel, resulting in more mortality and morbidity. We would like to call on the Indian government to accelerate and scale up the leadership that they have shown when they put programmes in place to combat household pollution, because it has shown good results when implemented,” she said.

The World Health Organization official said it would be ideal to immediately transition to cleaner energy and renewable non-pollutants, but with fairness at the centre of the policy.

“We recognise that there has to be a fair transition, particularly for those most vulnerable who are currently using polluting sources. That transition through better sources of energy will include access to LPG, biogas, ethanol, they can ensure transition while protecting the health of the people,” she said.

Neira said air pollution is a major contributor to noncommunicable diseases, or NCDs, which would be the subject of a resolution at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly in September.

“We need to make sure that the NCDs community understands that by tackling air pollution, we are contributing enormously to reducing the burden of NCDs,” she said.

Asked about the gap between air quality standards, Neira referred to recent findings published in The Lancet Planetary Health, noting that poor air quality was not limited to Delhi but all regions across the country.

“There’s a study which shows that we always focus on New Delhi when it comes to pollution, but I’m afraid it’s almost all of India where WHO standards on AQI are not implemented,” she said. “One thing is to distance slightly from WHO standards, and another is to go really far beyond them. Air pollution is a public health issue in India, and it needs more political engagement to accelerate the actions already in place.”

The official stressed that the country has the resources, innovation and technology to combat pollution. “We have a lot of hope that India can change the situation completely and even set an example for other countries.”