Air pollution in India is a serious health issue that is responsible for over 1.2 million premature deaths a year in the country. Prominent pollutants including ground-level ozone and particulate matter are damaging to the human cardio-respiratory systems and are the result of various human activities. Implementing mitigation measures to reduce the human health impacts of air pollution requires understanding what the sources are and where they come from.
In 2019, India launched the National Clean Air Program (NCAP) with the aim to achieve a 20-30% reduction of PM2.5 and PM10 concentrations by 2024. The foundation of NCAP’s success lies on three high-level goals for cities – knowledge and database augmentation, institutional strengthening, and mitigation action. Under this program, non-attainment cities are selected for implementing mitigation action to high impact sectors under NCAP. These interventions are for key sectors that include e-mobility, power sector, indoor air pollution, integrated waste management, transportation, agriculture, and dust management. Conducting accurate city-level emissions inventories for these sectors is fundamental to better inform directed action to achieve NCAP goals.
This webinar will focus on WRI India’s work to evaluate the emissions of Surat, India’s key polluting sectors including industries, household cooking, transportation, construction, and municipal waste burning. It will highlight methods used to carry out a bottom-up emissions inventory to better inform government decision making and narrow mitigation action points.
The Air Quality Tech Talk series covers key topics around technology and science in air quality, with an emphasis on learning from experiences and projects happening around WRI’s global offices.
Speakers: Dr. Ajay Nagpure, Head of Air Pollution – WRI India
Ajay Singh Nagpure is the Head of Air Pollution in the Sustainable Cities program at WRI India. He works on developing research strategies and conducting research in the area of air pollution and health risks. Ajay holds a Ph.D. degree from Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee) and has more than 14 years of the experience in the areas of infrastructure and environmental footprints, air pollution, and health risk assessment. He has published over 30 international peer-reviewed research articles in international journals including Nature Climate Change, Environmental Science and Technology, and Atmospheric Science.
Moderated by Beatriz Cardenas, Global Co-lead Air Quality, WRI Mexico
