Chairperson:
R Srikanth, Professor and Dean, School of Natural Sciences & Engineering, NIAS
About the lecture:
Preamble: Worsening air quality has been India’s most pressing problem in recent years. Toxic air is a health and environmental concern and takes an economic toll, impedes development, and affects the welfare of people. The tiny particles PM2.5 (particles having diameter < 2.5 micrometres) in the air is a leading baddie in urban India. We cannot delink the climate change debate with air pollution. Reducing pollutants such as BC, Ozone, etc., could help slow global warming and improve air quality.
Progress: Any effort must begin with accurate and timely science-based information. This ensures that awareness is heightened about the magnitude of the crisis and its manifold impacts. Disseminating proper, adequate information should also seek to inspire individual action, and a collective commitment to a future. With this spirit, the Union Ministry of Earth sciences commissioned an ambitious project namely SAFAR (System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research) framework to provide air quality forecast along with Health advisories and to spread environmental awareness for the citizens in 2010 starting from Delhi when awareness about air quality to common masses was scanty. This talk will cover this initiative's silent feature, which has now expanded to 4 major cities. It will also highlight some interesting scientific findings on WHO v/s Indian Standards, stubble burning, winter fury, etc.
Issues: At present when air quality issue is at centre stage and government is committed to invest with full sincerity, we have 3 independent delinked streams: (a) Science is doing its best efforts and technology is catching up; (b) public perception is driven by press and media and by those who can melodramatize the issue and (c) Policy is influenced by many factors like different political regimes, local factors, and priorities and often lacks scientific feedback. The major issue remains “the implementation strategy” and “concerted vision.”
Way Forward? The current scenario shows a need for better and more effective ways of improving air quality across the country, especially in the densest and populated urban spaces. Can an effective strategy be a holistic combination of successfully applied factual information, scientific ideas, and technological advancements? Or is it equally important to involve the grassroots, especially the most vulnerable populations, through community-based initiatives? A composite of science-based information, public participation and resulting policy has the potential to tackle pollution in the coming years.
About the speaker:
Prof. Gufran Beig is working in Air Quality and Climate Change. He is the Founder Project Director of India’s first air quality forecasting system, SAFAR, conceived and developed at IITM (Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt. of India). Presently he is working as “Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee Chair Professor at National Institute of Advanced Science, Indian institute of Science Campus, Bangalore. He is the recipient of coveted Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award and first Indian recipient to get Norbert-Mum international award of World Meteorological Organization, United Nations. He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. He received the Golden Jubilee and Silver Jubilee awards of IITM, Ministry of Earth Sciences He has published ~210 peer-reviewed SCI scientific papers, 23 technical monographs and edited 8 scientific books with a citation of more than 6300. He has delivered ~300 invited talks. He is the scientific advisory committee member of many international scientific bodies like GAW (WMO) and SPARC (WCRP).