Who is in charge of my 'air'?

Controlling air pollution calls for negotiations that cover airsheds, as air is mobile and beyond artificial legal jurisdictions

Everyone now understands that air quality in North India is one of the great public health failures of our times. Hundreds of millions of people are experiencing a wide range of adverse impacts (not just respiratory illness) because of the polluted air. The bad air retards the physical and intellectual development of children, and accelerates the deteriorative illnesses in middle age.

When thinking of solutions, the first barrier is that of statistics. A complete grid of air quality measurement stations is required all across India; these stations need to work correctly; their data needs to go out in real time. The second layer is “source attribution”. Specialised instruments are required to continuously monitor the air and break down the sources of pollution. This is the task of public health authorities in every state.

And then, we get to blocking the dust at its source. The burning of fields is perhaps likely to be a major source. This, in turn, emerges from the full complex of bad policies in the agriculture/food system. The Indian food system imposes costs upon the exchequer, harms the health of the people by feeding them too much cereal, and then poisons their air. All in all, it is difficult to imagine a more disastrous combination of public policies.

In this field, there is also a spatial dimension. The provision of a neighbourhood park or playing ground for children is local in its impact. Hence, this public good should be provided by the local government. There are some public goods, like the Indian Air Force, which should be provided by the national government. In between national and local jurisdictions lie a set of public goods/services like intermediate highways that are classified as “regional”, which in the Indian Constitution are allotted to states.

It is ironic, that we figured out a way to address the spatial problems of local regulation through decentralised governance (based on “the subsidiarity principle”), but the most basic element for wellness, i.e., clean air was left gasping!

Air quality is a difficult problem because of the divergence of the economic incidence of impact from the legal notions of jurisdiction. Many states have to work together to solve problems. The gains from pollution control are the highest in Uttar Pradesh (given the high population) and the costs of pollution control fall on Punjab and Haryana.

There is an analogy from the field of finance regarding collaboration that cuts across governments. After the 9/11 attacks, a hitherto sleepy body called the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was energised and put on steroids by the Western world led by the US. Over the next year, the FATF came up with globally enforceable regulations on anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terror. There were negotiations and collaboration across many countries in modifying their local policy frameworks in support of these goals.

In similar fashion, when the Lehman crisis brought the world to its knees, the global financial community again came together to create something akin to binding global standards on capital adequacy and banking regulation. This was a necessity because capital is mobile and effectively needs regulation, with the globe being treated as one jurisdiction. A bank of country A can operate and create financial instability in country B, externalising the cost of bad regulation and supervision in country A. It, therefore, became necessary to harmonise and standardise at least critical banking regulation.

The problem of air quality requires collaboration between multiple governments beyond the national border. Experts quoted in The Economist point out that in three South Asian capitals — Colombo, Dhaka and Kathmandu — less than a third of the air pollution comes from within the city. Around 30 per cent of Indian Punjab’s pollution originates in Pakistan, while 30 per cent of pollution in Bangladesh’s major cities blows in from India.

In Europe and in China, collaboration across geographically proximate regions is done through “airsheds”. World Bank experts have identified six relevant regional airsheds for India. They are vast areas, covering multiple urban, provincial, and national jurisdictions. Significantly, four of the six span national borders. One stretches from eastern Iran into Western Afghanistan and southern Pakistan; another covers much of Northern India and Western Bangladesh. According to the Bank's modelling, the more coordinated the pollution controls adopted in these expanses, the more cost-effective and beneficial they would be.

All authorities in a given airshed need to cooperate on data, research, and policy formulation. As The Economist points out, this would allow them to prioritise relatively easy or low-cost forms of pollution control — such as regulating brick kilns — over more difficult or expensive sorts, such as closing coal-fired power stations.

In this spirit, the Government of India created a statutory Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas. This is intended for the coordination, research, identification, and resolution of problems surrounding air quality. One flaw is readily visible: This is not the airshed that emerges from scientific analysis.

And then comes the hard work of collaboration, dispute resolution, and joint problem-solving. As emphasised above, it is hard to overemphasise the role of data: Public health authorities need to disseminate data on the level of SPM (suspended particulate matter) and on source attribution, gathered by thousands of meters run by state and city governments. A vibrant research community is required, which puts out papers on the problem. This environment of facts and research will create the right conditions for the negotiations.

To a large extent, the negotiations have to take place in a spirit of collaboration. The countries of South Asia have a natural disadvantage, given persistent frictions, for example, compared with the countries of Europe, which have found better peaceful coexistence. Within India also better norms for good behaviour matter greatly in bringing better outcomes. And then, there will be the problem of rogue actors, who pollute on an important scale and refuse to engage in pollution control. This will call for the development of new kinds of policy levers and concepts of property rights.

The writer is an honorary professor at CPR, member of a few for-profit and not-for-profit boards, and a former civil servant