The plan uses anti-smog weapons, automatic sweepers, sprinklers, fines, and closures in its battle against air pollution, employing real-time data and hundreds of fast response teams to carry out its directives.
Source: The Wire
The Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), which involved coordination between various agencies in Delhi to activate/react to pollution control measures in accordance with increasing Air Quality, was released by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in 2017. In November 2016, after Delhi witnessed one of its worst incidents of pollution-induced smog, the Supreme Court ordered Delhi and NCR authorities to develop a plan to deal with air pollution. These strategies have been used annually ever since.
The Supreme Court recommended a two-day lockdown in November 2021, less than a month after Delhi’s first 10-point winter action plan was issued, to reduce severe air pollution. It got worse in 2020, when monitoring stations in the city registered severe pollution levels between 450 and 499, with 500 being the worst level on the scale, according to the Central Pollution Control Board’s air quality index. This score is roughly equivalent to smoking 25 cigarettes per day, which is more than 20 times the World Health Organization’s (WHO) acceptable limit. Due to the decreasing air quality, a public health emergency had to be proclaimed in November 2019.
Source: India Today
Several studies have demonstrated that wherever there is a high density of trees, the quantity of pollutants is drastically low. It is well known that trees are nature’s finest defense against dust and other pollutants. On the other hand, the trees in these places effectively capture a lot of dust. Five trees were being felled in Delhi per hour in 2019, 2020, and 2021. With previous approval from the tree officer, 133,117 trees were felled, the majority of them to make way for housing complexes. As Justice Najmi Waziri noted on the high court bench, Remedying the harm and loss of tree-cover would possibly take another 20 years. Delhi has already lost the majority of its true forests aside from the central ridge and biodiversity park, and what is left is overrun with exotic species.
The majority of the trees that will be taken down are mature Indian native trees. Old, fully grown trees that are adapted to Delhi’s arid environment and support urban biodiversity, such as Banyan Fig, Semal and Siris, and Ashoka, are the city’s primary winter and year-round defense against air pollution. Kejriwal must add two more items to his lengthy 15-point program: a permanent ban on all tree cutting in Delhi and a negotiated moratorium on deforestation with its neighboring states. He cannot ignore the only known cure to air pollution.
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