Sustaining the unsustainable
What is bad news for the economy can sometimes be good news for the environment. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said this week that his country’s economic growth rate would slip down to seven percent from last fiscal year’s nine percent.
The shrinking of the regional economic power also means smaller economies in the region, including Nepal, will be affected one way or the other.
But come to think of it: If the smog - a mix of fog and dirty smoke — blanketing many northern parts of South Asia has been so thick and long-lived this winter, what would happen if air-polluting economic activities continued to rise?
The earlier Indian growth forecast for 2011-12 fiscal year was 8.5 percent which was later scaled down.
Chinese cities seeing rapid industrial development and constructions choke under haze taking a knock on people’s health and their daily lives.
Riots and protests over air-polluting factories and construction works are on the rise in China as the US embassy in Beijing continues to bring out alarming pollution level data dwarfing official Chinese figures.
While details about the impacts of air pollution in China is hard to ascertain, the cold wave Nepal’s northern neighbour sends southwest from its eastern part during winter showcases the worsening situation in South Asia.
A recent research I did for the BBC shows that the smog situation in several places of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan is becoming increasingly
serious.
The cold air escaping the Himalayan barrier from the Tibetan plateau sinks in these South Asian skies and forces the smog to stay as close as one kilometre from the earth’s surface.
The blanket of fog and aerosols not only block sunlight but also make people breath in dirty air. As a result, hospitals in Nepal’s Tarai region have begun to see increasing number of patients suffering from pulmonary obstructive diseases.
Some of them have died this winter but the death toll under similar condition has been way higher in India and Bangladesh in the last few weeks.
After a six-year investigation, India’s Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute found in 2007 that around 70 percent of inhabitants of Calcutta suffered from respiratory disorders including lung cancer, asthma, among others caused by air pollution.
Affecting human health apart, smog disrupts normal lives by, for instance, bringing down visibility to as low as zero. Hundreds of flights in the region have been diverted and cancelled this winter and severe train delays
have become routine. The loss thus incurred to the economy has not been calculated yet.
The air does get polluted even during other seasons but the boundary layer of the atmosphere — the nearest layer to the earth’s surface — is at least five kilometres away. And without the cold wave pushing them down, the pollutants get to disperse away.
To make matters worse, most of the constructions are done in the winter as the dry season allows such works unlike in the monsoon. The boom in the construction market means production of cements and other similar materials is at peak, taking pollution levels to the maximum.
All these activities demand massive energy which is mainly drawn from dirty sources like coal which means more and more coal-mines are excavated.
Some Indian media including Tehelka recently reported how State Pollution Control Boards in a number of states were downplaying the air pollution situation and were therefore being challenged in the court.
The “bad” example of the regional power has been followed by small neighbours as well. Brick kilns in Bangladesh, for instance, have dangerously mushroomed and they account for around 40 percent of air pollution in and around Dhaka.
Bangladeshi officials say they have a sustainable level of economic growth rate and therefore they require bricks to speed up their construction works.
But will such development be sustainable?
The impacts of pollutants from fossil fuel and burning of biomass are not limited to winter smog alone.
Some studies have indicated that soot including black carbon from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass burning is interfering with monsoon rains, the backbone of South Asian economy.
A study by NASA also indicated that ice and snow covered areas in the Himalayas — that normally reflect sunlight back — have begun to see deposits of black carbon absorbing heat and enhancing glacial meltdown.
The ecological and human health costs of economic developments are rising steeply.
Agreed that economic growth rate will be needed to combat poverty, although who reaps the real benefit has increasingly come under question — right from the hearts of capitalism like the Wall Street in the US and London Stock Exchange in the UK.
A hard balancing act indeed, but growth does not have to be achieved so dirtily that you harm the same poor people your development agenda was meant for.
It is also not something like dealing tactically with emissions of greenhouse gases — waiting for the developed countries to provide technological knowhow to do the job.
Air pollution is a local problem that cannot wait for a global solution.
Regional resolve, however, it undoubtedly demands because other countries in the region too are facing deepening dangers from major polluters like India.
One after another declaration of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summits has reckoned that.
Were it not for those vacuous words all these years, environment would not have celebrated the shrinking economy today.
Khadka is a BBC journalist based in London
navin.khadka@gmail.com
Posted on: 2012-01-13 09:26
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