The outdoor pollution alone kills 1.09 lakh adults and 7,513 children every year in India, while about six per cent (nearly Rs 3.75 lakh crore) of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) is getting lost due to a ruining environment. The numbers were flagged in the recently released World Bank study that was commissioned by the central government.
The research by the bank indicates how urban centres, which supposedly are symbols of growth, are choking the country. The report claims that air pollution significantly burdens the country’s economy, followed by cropland degradation and water pollution. It estimates that outdoor air pollution accounts for 29 per cent of the total pollution, followed by indoor air pollution (23 per cent), cropland degradation (19 per cent), water supply and sanitation (14 per cent), pasture (11 per cent) and forest degradation (4 per cent).
Titled ‘Diagnostic Assessment of Select Environmental Challenges in India,’ it is the first-ever national-level economic assessment of environmental degradation. It focuses primarily on particulate matter (PM10) from burning of fossil fuels, which has serious health consequences amounting up to three per cent of the country’s GDP losses due to lack of access to clean water supply, sanitation and hygiene besides natural resources depletion. The indoor air pollution is mainly due to burning of wood, mainly in rural India.
‘Grow now and clean up later will not be environmentally sustainable for India in the long run. We believe that a low-emission, resource-efficient greening of the economy is possible at a very low cost in terms of GDP growth,’said Muthukumara S Mani, senior environmental economist at the World Bank and lead author of the report.
‘The productive part of the population that gets impacted from air pollution is in cities. If you can save them, it is going to add up in terms of productivity, in terms of GDP,’ Mani added.
Citing an example of how small steps can help in improving the situation in a big way, Mani said, ‘Improving the efficiency of a power plant, which is a major cause of air pollution in India, by simply washing the coal is a simple and inexpensive process. This not only improves the efficiency of coal, but also save a lot of lives.’
The report suggests that India can make green growth a reality by putting in place strategies to reduce environmental degradation at the minimal cost of 0.02 per cent to 0.04 per cent of average annual GDP growth.
CB Bureau