No, China isn?t a good model for India to clean up its skies

India’s rapid urbanization has given rise to a noxious smog which hovers over its skylines each year, making Indians breathe some of the world’s most toxic air. The latest World Air Quality Report, recently published by Greenpeace and AirVisual, lays bare the extent of the country’s pollution problems, revealing that India is home to 22 of the world’s 30 most polluted cities.

It’s clear that New Delhi needs to build a durable, long-term strategy to cleanse the country’s skies. Measures put forward so far have been criticized as too little, too late. For example, the long-awaited National Clean Air Program, released this January, takes a number of important steps, particularly by setting India’s first national targets for reducing air pollution. The project is severely underfunded, however: the programme is set to receive only $91 million over two years—significantly less than environmentalists believe is necessary.

Scientific results troubling

Increasingly alarming scientific findings underline the necessity for faster, better-funded action. Over recent months, researchers have found that one in eight deaths across India is attributable to filthy air; that lung cancer is rising among non-smokers; that the inescapable smog is stunting children’s growth and cutting Indians’ life expectancy by as much as six years. According to the Lancet, one of the world’s most revered medical journals, air pollution killed 1.24 million Indians in 2017 alone.

Even by these standards, the new Greenpeace/AirVisual report is particularly damning. The authors based their findings on levels of PM2.5, a particle so tiny it can slip into a person’s bloodstream and provoke health problems such as cancer, heart failure and diabetes. Gurugram, topping the report’s league of shame, has a PM2.5 concentration of 135.8 micrograms per cubic meter – 13 times the World Health Organization’s safety limit.  Twelve other Indian cities, including New Delhi, recorded levels above 110 pg/m³. By comparison, New York’s PM2.5 concentration was only 7pg/m³.

Beijing a model for change?

These dire statistics have led to a clamour for reform—and many Indian commentators are looking to Beijing as a model for how to drastically cut emissions, noting that China has been diving down the pollution league tables just as India shoots up them.

A decade ago, most of the world’s dirtiest cities were Chinese. But then came the so-called ‘airpocalypse’, which prompted Beijing to spend a whopping $277 billion on clean up efforts. Villagers have been told to use gas-powered fuel sources rather than coal, and even had their old coal stoves confiscated. Electric cars have started pouring off the production line, replacing the old diesel-guzzlers.

The results—superficially at least—look impressive. Overall pollution levels across China’s municipalities have fallen by 12%; levels of PM2.5 in Beijing, once 30 times the WHO limit, are now half those of Delhi—though still significantly above the WHO-recommended ceiling.

But a more troubling picture lurks beneath this veneer. Official data released in February, sampling 39 northern Chinese cities, showed air pollution was up 16 percent on the year. Toxicity levels may have fallen in Beijing but they remain seriously high in smaller industrial hubs.

Heavy industries continue unchecked

Manufacturing of commodities such as steel, aluminium and cement has played a major role in clogging the skies of northern China, particularly in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. These industries’ high energy requirements—often met by coal-fired power—and rampant overproduction have pushed PM2.5 concentrations to even higher levels.

At the peak of its smog crisis in 2017, China imposed relatively stringent production cuts on aluminium and steel production. This winter, however, a strained economy thanks to trade tensions with the U.S. prompted Beijing to not to renew the blanket production cuts. As a result, pollution has soared, as have China’s exports of aluminium and steel.

Rural areas can’t kick the coal habit

Meanwhile, in rural areas of China, villagers have railed against orders to adopt expensive gas-powered heating systems. The government has instituted significant subsidies to ease the financial burden of the coal to gas transition, but many poor Chinese citizens still struggle to afford natural gas. They have economized by restricting heating to the most essential rooms of their homes—or by secretly burning coal despite the ban.

An unstable natural gas supply only added to the problems, and this winter Beijing has been forced to relax the coal ban and revise its emissions targets downward.

Rather than learn lessons from China’s successes, India would be advised to study its failures.

Ministers in Beijing have focused their anti-pollution drive on the major cities, notably their own, a strategy which has brought results which look more impressive in newspaper headlines than on the ground. In implementing its own anti-pollution scheme, India should aim to clean up smaller industrial zones as well: as China has shown, urban initiatives are not enough on their own. Rural communities have to get on board, too.

In India’s case, this means stimulating the renewable energy sector, which is currently showing only modest growth. It means limiting highly-polluting production, especially in energy-intensive fields based on coal power, like cement, steel and aluminum. It means imposing stricter environmental clearances on construction sites, known to significantly increase PM2.5 levels. It means subsidizing farmers to adopt cost-effective alternatives to biomass and to stop burning crop residue, a practice which is a majorcontributor to smog. It means helping citizens embrace cleaner technologies. One academic, cited by the WHO, has claimed India would reduce its pollution by one-third if it gave clean cooking stoves to all its villagers.

Rather than starting with easy solutions which will yield impressive short-term reductions, New Delhi needs a radical, comprehensive plan to tackle the nation’s pollution crisis.