Guidance framework for developing clean air action plan
To combat rising city air pollution levels, the Government of India launched the NCAP in January 2019 to reduce PM2.5 and PM10 levels by 20-30% by 2024 with respect to 2017 levels. The NCAP identifies 122 non-attainment cities for achieving the above pollution targets.The non-attainment cities were directed to come up with city-specific action plans, that included comprehensive mitigation actions for prevention, control, and abatement of air pollution besides augmenting the air quality monitoring network across their city and strengthening the awareness and capacity building activities. An Air Quality Action plan sets out the cost-effective measures to improve air quality towards compliance and identification of agencies with roles and responsibilities. As the cities rolled out the action plans for their respective cities, every city followed a different structure. It was also observed that most cities submitted these action plans without clearly identifying the sources of regional air pollution i.e. emissions released outside the administrative boundaries of the cities. Many of these action plans were generic and focusing on the context and deficient with respect to implementation. Hence, it was felt that there is a need to standardize the process as well as the structure of the action plan to ensure that the actions proposed are context- specific, comprehensive, and robust towards effective implementation. To address this objective, this report details guidelines for formulating a clean air action plan for Indian cities.
