COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL CLEAN AIR PROGRAMME
GS 3: Environment |Conservation, Environmental Pollution & Degradation
Why in News?
The Union Environment Ministry has constituted a committee to implement the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP).
Highlights:
- The committee aims to reduce particulate matter (PM) pollution by 20%-30% in at least 102 cities by 2024.
- The committee will be chaired by the Secretary, Union Environment Ministry and has among its members the Joint Secretary (Thermal), Ministry of Power; Director-General,The Energy Resources Institute (TERI), the Delhi-based think-tank; and Professor Sachidananda Tripathi, Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K).
- The committee would be headquartered in New Delhi.
- It ensures inter-ministerial organisation and cooperation, sharing information and resolving issues that could arise between ministries… The committee would also give overall guidance and directions to effectively implement the programmes.
NCAP:
- The NCAP is envisioned as a five-year action plan with 2019 as the first year. There would be a review every five years.
- The programme aims to provide the States and the Centre with a framework to combat air pollution.
Key features of NCAP:
- Achieve a national-level target of 20-30% reduction of PM2.5 and PM10 concentration by between 2017 and 2024.
- Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) will execute this nation-wide programme in consonance with the section 162 (b) of the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1986.
- The plan includes 102 non-attainment cities, across 23 states and Union territories, which were identified by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) on the basis of their ambient air quality data between 2011 and 2015.
- Non-attainment cities are those which have been consistently showing poorer air quality than the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. These include Delhi, Varanasi, Bhopal, Kolkata, Noida, Muzaffarpur, and Mumbai.
- The plan proposes a three-tier system, including real-time physical data collection, data archiving, and an action trigger system in all 102 cities, besides extensive plantation plans, research on clean-technologies, landscaping of major arterial roads, and stringent industrial standards.
- It proposes state-level plans of e-mobility in the two-wheeler sector, rapid augmentation of charging infrastructure, stringent implementation of BS-VI norms, boosting public transportation system, and adoption of third-party audits for polluting industries.
