Publication Year: 2018

The impact of air pollution on deaths, disease burden, and life expectancy across the states of India: the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

Summary

Background

 

Air pollution is a major planetary health risk, with India estimated to have some of the worst levels globally. To inform action at subnational levels in India, we estimated the exposure to air pollution and its impact on deaths, disease burden, and life expectancy in every state of India in 2017.
 

Methods

 

We estimated exposure to air pollution, including ambient particulate matter pollution, defined as the annual average gridded concentration of PM2.5, and household air pollution, defined as percentage of households using solid cooking fuels and the corresponding exposure to PM2.5, across the states of India using accessible data from multiple sources as part of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2017. The states were categorised into three Socio-demographic Index (SDI) levels as calculated by GBD 2017 on the basis of lag-distributed per-capita income, mean education in people aged 15 years or older, and total fertility rate in people younger than 25 years. We estimated deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) attributable to air pollution exposure, on the basis of exposure–response relationships from the published literature, as assessed in GBD 2017; the proportion of total global air pollution DALYs in India; and what the life expectancy would have been in each state of India if air pollution levels had been less than the minimum level causing health loss.
 

Findings

 

The annual population-weighted mean exposure to ambient particulate matter PM2·5 in India was 89·9 μg/m3 (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 67·0–112·0) in 2017. Most states, and 76·8% of the population of India, were exposed to annual population-weighted mean PM2·5 greater than 40 μg/m3, which is the limit recommended by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards in India. Delhi had the highest annual population-weighted mean PM2·5 in 2017, followed by Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Haryana in north India, all with mean values greater than 125 μg/m3. The proportion of population using solid fuels in India was 55·5% (54·8–56·2) in 2017, which exceeded 75% in the low SDI states of Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha. 1·24 million (1·09–1·39) deaths in India in 2017, which were 12·5% of the total deaths, were attributable to air pollution, including 0·67 million (0·55–0·79) from ambient particulate matter pollution and 0·48 million (0·39–0·58) from household air pollution. Of these deaths attributable to air pollution, 51·4% were in people younger than 70 years. India contributed 18·1% of the global population but had 26·2% of the global air pollution DALYs in 2017. The ambient particulate matter pollution DALY rate was highest in the north Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi, Punjab, and Rajasthan, spread across the three SDI state groups, and the household air pollution DALY rate was highest in the low SDI states of Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Assam in north and northeast India. We estimated that if the air pollution level in India were less than the minimum causing health loss, the average life expectancy in 2017 would have been higher by 1·7 years (1·6–1·9), with this increase exceeding 2 years in the north Indian states of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana.
 

Interpretation

 

India has disproportionately high mortality and disease burden due to air pollution. This burden is generally highest in the low SDI states of north India. Reducing the substantial avoidable deaths and disease burden from this major environmental risk is dependent on rapid deployment of effective multisectoral policies throughout India that are commensurate with the magnitude of air pollution in each state.
 

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More priorities, more problems? Decision-making with multiple energy, development and climate objectives

Summary

The Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement pose new conceptual challenges for energy decision makers by compelling them to consider the implications of their choices for development and climate mitigation objectives. This is a nontrivial exercise as it requires pragmatic consideration of the interconnections between energy systems and their social and environmental contexts and working with a plurality of actors and values. There are an increasing number of indices, frameworks and academic studies that capture these interconnections, yet policy makers have relatively few ex-ante tools to pragmatically aid decision-making. This paper, based on a collation of 167 studies, reviews how multi-criteria decision approaches (MCDA) are used in energy policy decisions to explicitly consider multiple social and environmental objectives, and the conceptual usefulness of doing so. First, MCDA can be used to distil a finite set of objectives from those of a large number of actors. This process is often political and objectives identified are aligned with vested interests or institutional incentives. Second, MCDA can be used to build evidence that is both qualitative and quantitative in nature to capture the implications of energy choices across economic, environmental, social and political metrics. Third, MCDA can be used to explore synergies and trade-offs between energy, social and environmental objectives, and in turn, make explicit the political implications of choices for actors. The studies reviewed in this paper demonstrate that the use of MCDA is so far mainly academic and for problems in the Global North. We argue for a mainstreaming of such a multi-criteria and deliberative approaches for energy policy decisions in developing countries where trade-offs between energy, development and climate mitigation are more contentious while recognizing the data, capacity and transparency requirements of the process.

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Mapping Power: The Political Economy of Electricity in India’s States

Introduction

Despite several decades of reform, India’s electricity sector remains marked by the twin problems of financial indebtedness and inability to provide universal, high quality electricity for all. Although political obstacles to reform are frequently invoked in electricity policy debates, Mapping Power provides the first thorough analysis of the political economy of electricity in Indian states. Through narratives of the electricity sectors in fifteen major states, this book argues that a historically rooted political economy analysis provides the most useful means to understand the past and identify reforms for the future. The book begins with an analytic framework to understand how the political economy of power both shapes and is shaped by a given state’s larger political economy. The book concludes with a synthetic account of the political economy of electricity that is animated by insights from the state-level empirical materials. The volume shows that attempts to depoliticize the sector are misplaced. Instead, successful reform efforts should aim at a positive dynamic between electricity reform and electoral success.

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Summary

Punjab’s power sector, known for its agricultural embeddedness and chronic subsidy challenges, was one of the least attractive and pragmatic choices for reform advocates. Considering a feeble external push and forceful internal resistance, the state has undertaken partial electricity reforms to comply with legislative mandates from the central government. Despite limited reforms, Punjab has made substantive progress on electricity access, quality of supply, and some operational efficiencies. This chapter in ‘Mapping Power: The Political Economy of Electricity in India’s States’ analyses how the power sector has evolved in Punjab, especially through institutional restructuring and policy reforms, with the objective to examine the policy choices, outcomes, winners, and losers at the state level. It analyses the political–economic drivers for these policy choices and how they deviate from or comply with signals from the central government. Building on these findings, it also discusses the implications of past experiences and prevailing power dynamics for ongoing and future reforms.

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Poverty in the Midst of Abundance: Repressive Populism, Bureaucratization, and Supply-side Bias in Madhya Pradesh’s Power Sector

Summary

Electricity reforms in Madhya Pradesh remain underreported, despite some atypical outcomes. This chapter in ‘Mapping Power: The Political Economy of Electricity in India’s States’ examines the political economy of transitions in MP’s power sector, with the objective of identifying drivers of policy choices and their outcomes. Drawing on the findings, it explains how intensive institutional restructuring has resulted in bureaucratization and consolidated state control over the sector, and discusses the resulting outcomes. It also analyses the implications of past experiences for ongoing and future reforms.

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Transforming Reforms: Hype, Hostility, and Placation in Andhra Pradesh’s Power Sector Reforms

Summary

Andhra Pradesh’s experience with electricity reforms and their political ramifications has not only been fascinating a case for political analysts, but also have influenced reform approaches in other states. This chapter in ‘Mapping Power (‘Mapping Power: The Political Economy of Electricity in India’s States’ explores the political economy of AP’s electricity sector transitions over four periods, with the objective to explain the drivers of policy choices and their outcomes. Drawing on the findings, it discusses the transformations in electricity reform strategy over two phases of reforms and analyses the implications of past experiences for ongoing reforms in the sector.

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India and Climate Change: Evolving Ideas and Increasing Policy Engagement

Summary

India is a significant player in climate policy and politics. It has been vocal in international climate negotiations, but its role in these negotiations has changed over time. In an interactive relationship between domestic policy and international positions, India has increasingly become a testing ground for policies that internalize climate considerations into development. This article critically reviews the arc of climate policy and politics in India over time. It begins by examining changes in knowledge and ideas around climate change in India, particularly in the areas of ethics, climate impacts, India’s energy transition, linkages with sustainability, and sequestration. The next section examines changes in politics, policy, and governance at both international and national scales. The article argues that shifts in ideas and knowledge of impacts, costs, and benefits of climate action and shifts in the global context are reflected and refracted through discourses in India’s domestic and international policies.

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Appellate Authorities under Pollution Control Laws in India: Powers, Problems and Potential

Introduction

Over the last four decades, courts in India have developed a rich jurisprudence on environmental issues. The large body of environmental case-law reflects the judiciary’s predominant approach to environmental grievance redressal – directing regulatory institutions to take action against persistent violations and injustices, expanding the scope of environmental regulation and recommending special environmental adjudicatory mechanisms to make environmental justice more accessible. However, apart from a few judgments there has been less judicial attention, and resultant executive action, to strengthen existing structures and processes for effective redressal against administrative arbitrariness or inaction. This paper focuses on an often overlooked aspect of environmental grievance redressal, viz., the effectiveness of existing redressal forums. Such assessments of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) are already emerging. But, here the authors evaluate the effectiveness of a set of much older environmental redressal forums viz., the Appellate Authorities constituted under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974 (the Water Act) and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981 (Air Act) on two broad dimensions – ability to deliver good quality decisions and accessibility.

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