Prakash Javadekar, Union Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change stressed that ‘Jan Bhagidari’ (People Participation) is integral towards mitigating air pollution and protecting the environment in general.
While addressing a function on the occasion of World Environment Day, he further said that a host of initiatives have been taken in past five years which are now showing results.
“While poor air quality days which was 246 in the year 2014 have now come down below 200, the number of moderate to good air quality days have increased from just 108 in 2016 to 159 in 2018”, said the Union Minister.
Minister said that the incidents of stubble burning has reduced by 25-30% and also stressed that by 2020 India will leapfrog to BSVI from the current BSIV fuel standards.
To combat air pollution, Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change has launched the National Clean Air programme (NCAP) which is a mid-term 5 Year Action Plan with targets of 20-30% reduction of PM 2.5 and PM 10 concentration in 102 cities.
It has been decided that each SPCB will tie up with a leading academic institution in the State that would act as the technical partner at the State level for the programme.
IIT Kanpur has been appointed by MoEFCC as the nodal academic institution to coordinate with all other leading academic institutions in States.
Tripartite MoU with identified academic institution in the State with respective SPCB and MoEF&CC being the other two partners was also signed for 17 States today.
The States for which the MoU was signed today are AP, Assam, Bihar, Chandigarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, J&K, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, UP, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.
