Episode 2: There's Something in the Air

South Asia is home to some of the most polluted cities in the world: with alarming death tolls, widespread respiratory illness, and growing concerns around equity, access, and resilience. Yet, despite the scale of the problem, responses across the region often lean toward adaptive fixes rather than long-term, preventive action.  

In this episode, we explore how the clean air movement is being shaped by public pressure, new technologies, and a growing recognition that clean air must be treated as a public good. Our discussion challenges conventional narratives: Is air pollution simply a consequence of how countries develop? Should clean air be a political, technological, and equity issue? And can we design solutions that are preventive, affordable, and fair, before the public can no longer breathe?  

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Delhi receives on an annual basis 30 to 40% of pollution from outside, but Delhi also contributes about during winter up to 40% of pollution in Moeda. Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology data is showing that Delhi's own pollution source is 30%. 70% from outside. Now that means whatever Delhi may do, but Delhi will still remain polluted if you have not dealt with that 70%.

SPEAKER_06 0:35

Welcome to Reorient. I'm Garov Gupta.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

And I'm in Akshi Sophi. At this time of the year, air pollution is top of mind. We all know how bad Delhi gets in venture. Recently, Delhi's AQI was over 500. A shocking figure. But Bombay where I live isn't too far behind. So I think listeners will resonate with this episode as we try to understand the problem.

SPEAKER_06 0:59

And we're gonna start with the murky end of things by actually talking about just how bad air pollution is. What does it mean when you say 500, right? So Anumitaroy Chodri, executive director at the Center for Science and Environment, and Surashina, the executive director of programs at the Clean Air Fund, will give us a picture of the staggering scale of the problem and how it's really a full-blown health crisis. Interestingly, they also tell us about newer ways of looking at pollution management.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Yeah, but if I had to play devil's advocate, this is a conversation that's been going on for years. What's astonishing is that we haven't solved it yet. China had a major problem and they went to war against pollution. What's stopping us?

SPEAKER_06 1:37

Very good question. Sits at the heart of this, and it's several things as we'll hear. We we still react to air pollution as if it's an emergency as opposed to a larger year-round problem. It's not an event that occurs just during wintertime. And narrowing it down to a seasonal problem prevents us, I think, from devising these long-term solutions. Then there's the fragmentation at a governance level. So there's no single source of authority or data. And as a result, there's been failures in implementing pollution control measures.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

I wonder whether people truly understand how serious the situation is. Of course, we can see the pollution and feel it in our lungs, but what does it take to truly bring the issue home?

SPEAKER_06 2:14

I think this is why data is so crucial. It makes the problem real and provides a measure so that the problem can be fixed. I mean, I spoke to Amit Moria and Roli Agarwal of Google Airview, which provides this hyper-local air quality data on maps. They had some eye-opening things to say that I think listeners would be interested to hear. And it's, I think, maybe even to use, right? Google AirView is something that we can all start using. And I also had a conversation with Abed Omar, who started Pakistan Air Quality Initiative to monitor air quality in Pakistan. His is a fascinating story of a citizen-led awareness movement. I think with a lot of commonalities with other parts of Asia, what we've experienced in India, what has been experienced in Bangladesh.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

I'm trying hard to stay positive. I'm keen to hear about the solutions of how we can learn from countries that are taking measures to tackle the issue.

SPEAKER_06 3:01

Well, best to hear it from our guests.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

So what they really get wrong is the whole understanding of the magnitude of the problem and then what needs to be done. So as I was telling you earlier, that it has now become a seasonal conversation, right? So what people think that when air pollution is visible, thick, during winter, during that very difficult inversion period, as if that's what it is. And the moment it disappears and you can't see this anymore, and then it's like out of sight, out of mind. And therefore, for them to make the connection between air pollution and all the deep solutions that are needed across different sectors, that's what they don't get. And the another thing that they get very wrong because of this seasonality of the conversation and the visibility of the problem, they think as if just taking some reactive measures, okay, just for a few days, is perhaps going to do the magic, that the air is going to clean up, that if you just say, okay, stop construction for three days or don't let trucks come inside, I mean, it's very myopeak somewhere. So even though people are beginning to understand that it's a problem that's hurting all of them, and all of them are very deeply affected, but to join the dots of what it takes, that's where the big problem is.

SPEAKER_06 4:37

Yeah, and I think this is a human brain problem, right? The problem of large numbers. And I see some of that also in the health effects, right? Because the health effects are nonlinear. Is it true to say that just reducing air pollution also by 10% doesn't really do that much because of the way in which the first 20% affects you versus the next 60% versus the next 90%?

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Yes. Understanding the nature of health impact itself is a very big agent of that now J needs to unfold. So understand that there is a short-term effect that when you're inhaling something very bad, immediately there will be some trigger effect for your respiratory conditions and cardiac conditions. But breathing toxic air over a period of time, and now we have enough evidence to show that air pollution affects each and every organ of the body. And as a result, because it's very commonsensical actually, that those tiny, tiny particles that go deep into your lungs and then they break through your blood barrier, hit each and every organ. So all metabolic diseases, what we call the non-communicable diseases today, from diabetes to hypertension, stroke, cancer, are going to determine the health outcome. But there is also a logic that if you reduce the exposure, then yes, that will reduce the health risk.

SPEAKER_06 5:54

Let me put some numbers behind what Anamita is describing as the health effects of air pollution. In 2023, more than two million lives in India were lost to air pollution-related diseases. Nine out of ten of those deaths were the usual non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, lung cancer, diabetes, and even dementia. All of these things are impacted by air pollution. Globally, air pollution causes around 8 million deaths annually. Again, the largest concentration of that is in the endogangetic plane. And while we talk about air pollution outside the home, what's often missing in this whole conversation is air pollution within the home. It's very hard to nail the message that open fire cooking, solid fuel cooking are incredibly bad as they cause particulate matter to build inside the home. And this is harmful, especially for children. These practices are romanticized. You know, these are traditional means of cooking, and there's a belief that food tastes better when cooked in this way. This even goes to the idea of just doing a home barbecue with all that smoke and that coal and it's seen as giving us better flavor, but it is also causing incredible amounts of harm in terms of the particulate matter it releases. And this is why these behaviors are hard to break. So I went back to Anamita to ask her if she sees a connection between the micro and the macro. If people are not accepting that the air inside their home is in fact polluted when they cook on an open fire, then they're not realizing the level of damage that that air does. Is that part of the challenge?

SPEAKER_02 7:21

You know, this is turning out to be a very difficult and a complex problem to solve for us right now. So, and increasingly what we are realizing that this household pollution, you know, the whole cooking that is happening. And we know that the cooking not only harming the women and the children and the families, but also that's contributing to the outdoor air pollution. In India, I'm told that the household pollution is contributing as much as 30% of the outdoor air pollution.

SPEAKER_06 7:47

Yeah, it ranges between 20 and 30, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

See, the simple solution that we are talking about is that you just have to expand the clean energy access for these households. India has also implemented one of the largest RPG programs. And uh and in fact it has done well. If you really look at that, come up the data that we have seen. But yes, somewhere, we are now hitting a roadblock. And clearly what is happening is also the nature of poverty in the country that even after subsidy, the chronic poverty does not allow them to purchase and sustain the usage of LPG, even at the cost, even at the subsidized cost. So we now have to find other methods of doing it. Maybe, you know, we have to push the rich and the middle class out of LPG into electric cooking, and you free up a lot more LPG for the poor people and those who need, I mean, you have to make the economics of this work very well.

SPEAKER_06 8:49

Aside from health hazards, air pollution has serious economic fallout, sometimes in ways we understand and ways we sometimes don't. Like, for example, tourists will avoid polluted places, but even IT infrastructure will work less well when there is a lot of pollution in the air. These are things we don't often really see, but are actually huge hidden costs. Shirish and I discussed what air pollution costs the country and whether we should be spending millions to save the multiple billions that dirty air costs us.

SPEAKER_04 9:16

So, Gaurav, I think the report that Dahlberg did in 2019, 2020, which actually very clearly showed what about 95 billion losses to the Indian businesses, right, on an annual basis, the cost of air pollution, right? I think what we're trying to do is I think that some bit of advocacy is still needed, right? To flip the narrative. And instead of saying this is the economic cost, what would be the economic gains of or investment case for investing in the in air pollution, the kind of climate co-benefit you would get, but also the economic co-benefit or labor productivity or new jobs that can see, unless we also need to kind of frame the narrative in the language that would make it much more acceptable, right? I think the biggest concerns across economies is about job security or unemployment. And if we can we know clearly for by investment in the clean tech sector, which will also benefit air pollution, investment in sectoral measures and solutions which will have direct benefits on clean air. This can lead towards new employment being created. This can lead towards new investments coming into the sector.

SPEAKER_06 10:24

Across the world, there have been many citizens movements pressuring governments to act to mitigate pollution. In fact, I would argue that some of the biggest leapforwards we've seen in different cities around the world and in different states has been because of citizens movements. One of the most famous ones was Mum's Clean Air Force in the US, which had mums going and knocking on the doors of their local representatives saying that they wanted to see clean air at a time when the US was known for its smog. In India, we're starting to see the shoots of a citizen movement with initiatives like my right to breathe. And so I was curious to know, both from Anumidda and Shirish, how far we are from a real tipping point of a citizen movement that translates into political action.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

Now, here I'll therefore draw a parallel that as you gave the example of the US. So in the US, after the Clean Air Act, it has also seen very strong what they call environmental justice movement. Now that voice, when that started to get stronger, the water amendments were carried out in the Cleaner Act to ensure that all the solutions that are designed, they take into account this disproportionate impact to design the solution. Now in India, we have not got there yet. In India, there is an awareness, but this is more confined to the educated, those who know, those who can access information, those who are exposed to the knowledge. But the vulnerable groups who are deeply affected, the woman burning the chulha, you know, as I said, the poor people, they are not urinated, even though the studies have shown that they are aware of what air pollution is doing to them. But they do not have that wherewithal to negotiate solutions for themselves. And as a result, not only the pollution is impacting them disproportionately, sometimes even the solutions, because there is a lot of gentrification of the solution as well. So when we say, okay, let's just push this industry out of the city, okay, not in my backyard, okay, that is the middle class demand. But when you are doing that, you're not accounting for how the poor people who you are also pushing out with that livelihood source that whether you're taking into account their interest or not.

SPEAKER_04 13:00

I think we saw the same thing happen in Poland about 10, 15 years back, right? The high levels of smog events led to movement where civil society came together and asked for clear resolutions to be put in place. And that is now showing effect, right? It takes sometimes these movement building takes time and to show result. I think there are very concerted voices in pockets right now across, I wouldn't just say India alone. I think from the perspective of what we see across Asia for clean air funds work in in different pockets, that this is groups of civil society movements growing slowly and demanding for these to happen. So I think yes, it's building up that level of advocacy, and policymakers are also listening to it, right? In terms of what the right measures have to be input. So whether it is in Nepal, whether it is in India, in pockets you can see these movements gaining traction as we move forward.

SPEAKER_06 13:58

We have a great example of a people's movement just across the border. Abid Omar founded Pakistan Air Quality Initiative to collect data on air pollution in an effort to influence policy.

SPEAKER_05 14:10

The story of air pollution awareness in Pakistan is very much citizen-led. But this is back in 2017 when, you know, when say the first Lahore High Court case uh happened, which was, you know, citizen-initiated litigation. The year after we had a group of mothers called the scary ummis, which came together and started lobbying the education department and the health departments of Punjab to take smog as a health emergency, and that led to them closing schools as early as uh 2019. We had the first school closures happening. And these same mothers went out and conducted hundreds of awareness sessions at uh not only elite private schools but at public schools across Punjab. And I think those have been very instrumental in raising awareness to where it is today. But we had a pause by the pandemic, and uh, since the pandemic, we haven't seen another uprising of citizens. So there is interest, people want to do something, but I have yet to see boots on the ground. And by boots on the ground, I don't mean that you know they're going out and protesting, but rather doing anything, right? Like, where is the pressure? So somehow we still have to like find a feat again, and that is a role for like other citizens to now take the mantle forward because I feel the mothers who were involved then have moved on to other priorities with their lives and you know stages of their children.

SPEAKER_06 15:41

When I used to talk about air pollution in India, people would often cite China, would often say, Hey, at least we're not as bad as Beijing. But our neighbor, which has been dealing with an air pollution crisis for a long time, has actually now started to deal with it quite effectively. Beijing air pollution levels have come down significantly from their highs 10 years back. What can we learn from Beijing and other uh cities, countries? I asked Anameta to explain China's approach to the problem.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Some of the key drivers of this change has been that where you have a very strong regulatory framework with the regulatory target and a strong compliance framework. Now that the fundamental. And like for instance in Beijing, so when they said initially that we are going to reduce pollution by 25% in five years, okay, then based on that target, they have then built, implemented their action plan in such a way that, and it's very interesting the way they did it. One, the multi-sector action was designed for both scale and speed, okay, as well as the regional approach, which we just talked about. So they did not confine the action only within the boundaries of Beijing, but they took three contiguous provinces, okay. So therefore, everything that was done for Beijing was done across all the three provinces at the scale of the change. So they had gone after, say, for instance, coal for heating, for industrial uh usage. In each sector, the scale of implementation has been massive, and that's what had made the difference. So instead of they have actually overreached their target of 25% and they've actually reduced it by 40%. Now, similarly, in US, they also provide targets based on the non-attainment status of the state. And there the truth is that the federal funds that are given to the states, if they fail to meet the target, then the federal grants can be cut. Okay, so there is this uh there's this penal provision that also drives. So they've all figured out different regulatory methods in doing that. Now, in India, it's very interesting. We have seen some good reforms. So if you look at the National Clean Air Program, they've also given a target. They've said 40% reduction by 2026. They've also given performance-linked funding. They are saying so more than 10,000 crore have already been sanctioned and it's come uh to reduce pollution in about 42 billion plus cities. Now, where is the problem? The problem is mainly with the design of the solution, scope of the solution. So when you look recently when we did the analysis, so of almost the 10,000 crore that has been spent for to clean up the air in these 42 cities, 64% of that has gone only for dust control, which is potholes or road sweeping, right? But the if you look at how much have they spent to reduce emissions from industry, power plant, from transport, in fact, less than 1% of the funding has gone for industrial pollution control, right? So as I said, that first you're making an action plan. So these are all based on action plans, which are multi-sector, which have said what you need to do in each sector. But when it comes to doing it, then there is no clear system of defining the scope of all the priority strategies across all sectors, and then you kind of reduce it to only what you do, which is a business as usual for a department. Now we are working so closely with the cities and seeing that how they are implementing and so forth. But even after the policies define what they need to do, even after Central Pollution Control Board gives them, give them the indicators around which the strategy needs to be designed. But when it comes to doing it, it doesn't happen like that. You know, a lot of things that they need to do just don't happen. So now, for instance, I mean I just uh let's say vehicle evolution. Now, in that there are many indicators that you need to phase out old vehicles, you need to improve your technology, you need to bring in electric vehicles, you need to do public transport, walking, cycling, parking restraint. But when you look at what they have actually done, then maybe it's just one or two things that they have done. They may have just phased out a few vehicles, they may have bought a few buses, but it is not designed to do, to build the scale of the solution uh for what it takes to make the difference. And they have budget and resources with it.

SPEAKER_06 20:17

Sometimes I see it in both directions. Sometimes people are like, well, we've got bad air because of what's going on in Delhi. And then others who are saying we've got bad air because of everybody else and not us, right? It's it's it's all imported, it's all because of what's happening at the farmers in Punjab and so. You know, I think this feels like another aspect that people can't get their hands around, which is like who to blame, and the fact that there is quite a complex weather pattern conversation. Is there something about the Indo-Gangetic plains cities? Because it does stretch all the way to Pakistan. There are many cities there that are experiencing this challenge, and there are multiple cities across North India. What is it about that sort of geography that is causing these issues, or is it just about the localized urban development decisions?

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Absolutely. Now, this is very important for us to understand. And here I will answer this question in a little different way. You know that in India, Delhi has been fighting the air pollution battle for now almost more than 20 years, okay, with CNG phasing out oil vehicles, stopping all coal power plants, bringing natural gas to its industry, stopping trucks. A lot has actually happened in Delhi. Okay. And it's very interesting if you look at the long-term trend that the overall trend in Delhi is actually downward. And very interesting thing is that because all the action taken so far have targeted diesel and coal, essentially, that today there is now data available to show you that how diesel consumption has gone down dramatically in this city. Even share of diesel cars have dramatically reduced, and coal consumption is nil. Now, the question is that yet Delhi is suffering from pollution levels where we need another 60% reduction to meet the clean air standards. And I'm telling you that the New science is telling us that Delhi cannot become a green island in the Indogangetic Plain, okay, just by taking action within the boundaries of Delhi. Because of the movement of air, air pollution does not follow adventurative or any political boundary. Okay, it goes between boundary. And if air is blowing, so the pollution is also blowing with it. Right? Now we have data. So if you take the source appointment data for Delhi, it shows that Delhi receives on an annual basis about 30 to 40 percent of pollution from outside. But Delhi also contributes during winter up to 40% of pollution in Moida. So it is receiving, but I'm also contributing. And during winter, now Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology data is showing that Delhi's own pollution source is 30%, 70% from outside. Now that means whatever Delhi may do, but Delhi will still remain polluted if you have not dealt with that 70%. This therefore is now taking us towards the new approaches to air quality management, which they call regional airshed-based management. Essentially, now, in fact, World Bank and others have started to delineate airsheds. You know, these are the common air mass, which have common meteorological climatic parameters, and so they can delineate that within the country and also at a South Asia level. Okay. So now they have done that. But now the question is that what does it mean to operationalize a regional airshed, air quality management? Now we have taken examples in the US where, in the part of the Clean Air Act, you know, they establish the responsibility for the upwind polluters, for the downwind air quality, right? So when we say we are making a clean air action plan, we also have to take into account that how much of my sources are contributing to the downwind side of another state. So now, under the national clean air program, they are now talking about the Indo-Gangetic Plane and they're looking at the coordinated action amongst seven states of Indo-Gangetic Plane so that they all develop their common strategies to address. But let's see how that will take off. But the reality is if we do not deal with it, then we are in deep problems. So not only for the continuous sources of pollution, but as you also said, the episodic problem as well. And the episodic problem is the crop burning, which you said, Punjab. So the crop burning, so that's seasonal, that happens for just about a month. But and its contribution to Delhi's air quality will be highly variable, depending on the speed and the direction of the air. But we have to deal with it because the whole airshed is getting fouled around that time. So these are the strategies that will have to be part of the next generation action.

SPEAKER_06 24:55

The Indo-Genetic Airshed is shared by India's neighbors. And so, in many ways, it acts as a natural laboratory for us to be thinking about the solutions that might work in one place and how they could be applied elsewhere. Uh, right now, all countries within that air shed have quite differing responses to air pollution. Surish told me about what Dhaka is doing that we should be in fact learning from.

SPEAKER_04 25:18

I'll give you an example of brick ins in Bangladesh. There's been significant investment that has gone both on the research side as well as highlighting and testing new processes to be introduced or clearer brick making processes, right? Including shifting away from the traditional technologies to more advanced one. And we have seen that the state of Bihar has also gone through a very similar process of you know transition in the brick kids. So there is a lack of trust learning that is naturally happening because of the funding that is going into the region or the other programs in the region. And I think it's a good case is you know, last year the World Bank has obviously been taking a lot of interest in the entire Indo-Gangetic plane, the Hindu Koshamalias and the foothills. And we were all together, and it's an annual convening that now happens where the neighboring all the countries were present. And there's a lot of formal exchange that started to happen on sharing of data, sharing of lessons learned, experiences. Financing is a common element that each of these countries need essentially to move forward. So I think the process is happening, started to happen in South Asia. It's not an easy region for regional cooperation or knowledge exchange, et cetera, to happen. Whereas if you draw a parallel to Southeast Asia, the ASEAN agreement that is already in place, that sharing of knowledge experience is moving much faster there, right? We also work through Clean Air Fund has a small project working with UNSCAP in there is a regional platform on air pollution, which is a knowledge exchange platform, which is looking at Asia Pacific as a basis. So I think it's that sharing of experiences has started to happen now. It's more, we could say, visible in certain geographies and less in certain areas, but that level of cooperation is happening now.

SPEAKER_06 27:00

But I think for something like that to succeed, maybe to come back to something you've been drawing up. I guess you know when you think about air pollution, so let's go back up to the macroeconomic level of it's an air shed, it's multiple jurisdictions, it's cities, it's different countries and so forth. Is there a grand bargain here of financing? Like do you ever see a financing of an airshed? Which because in a way, when you say, look, it is much more economically sensible to think about that single thing and then think about, okay, therefore, we need not a repeat of the same things, but for us to think about who does what. Do you think there is a future in which we might finance the cleanup of an airshed as a single thing? Or do you think it's always going to be the political economy is going to be such that Delhi is going to need to get its$1 billion to do what it needs to do, and Karachi needs it, and Dhaka needs something else and so forth?

SPEAKER_04 27:49

I mean, in a sense, the if you look at the current effort that the bank is trying to do with the countries around the South Asia, is going for an airshed level financing, right? So that's the model. And there is a good example of what ADB did in the past in China, right? The Heibade province that the whole, which was a fairly large regional airshed approach in a sense, to look at transformation to come. So I think it's doable. It's not that it's not doable. Now, whether it will be possible to do it transboundary, international boundaries, or whether it is even practical to just keep it within the I mean, even within the national boundaries, it's not going to be easy, right? In terms of the level of preparedness of different states in India to go for an airshed level approach of financing is not going to be equally easy, right? So I think it's practically it's possible. I think it's the administrative levels of creating that space is going to be far more challenging.

SPEAKER_06 28:44

I mean, let's bring this down to microeconomics, right? So when you had a similar conversation of carbon, there's a lot of private sector companies that are like, okay, this is my business model for addressing the carbon issue. And clearly renewable energy is the biggest. But when it comes to pollution, right? Air pollution, other than like clean cooking and what we've already discussed, EVs and renewable energy, which again, renewable energy and EV is still, it's not air pollution that's generally the driving sort of financing aspect. Maybe obviously with clean cooking, yes. I think that's generally true.

SPEAKER_04 29:14

Asia is growing, so it will have its own challenges of growth aspiration as well as the environmental protection side. If you really look at the sectors, then obviously the transport sector, there's a huge opportunity around the value chain that can be built across the sub-sectors and the various vehicle segments, right? Because the tailpipe emission is a major source of air pollution for the NOx essentially to come out. I think one sector that we're trying to build much more evidence around it is where new opportunities will open up. And there is a direct engagement with employment, with or with job creation, is the micro and small and medium enterprises. Right? If you look at the entire, just look at the entire IGP of the Indian side of the Indo-galitic plane, right from Punjab all the way up to West Bengal. That's what those continuous states cover. This is very large concentration of MSME sectors.

SPEAKER_06 30:09

Because, for example, brick kilns also come in, right?

SPEAKER_04 30:11

Lots of brick and comes in, metallurgical industry, foundry unit. So a large number of small-scale industries are in these areas. Where work has been happening on energy efficiency, process efficiency improvement. But I think the last care transformation of changing fuels, you know, shifting towards cleaner fuel for production processes or changing production process itself is going to be a huge economic opportunity, huge investment opportunity. It's a sector which has traditionally never caught the scale of investment leading towards this modernization, right? Because a lot of them are family-owned, individual-owned units, very difficult to go to markets for borrowing. So I think that sector can bring a lot of transformation. And the gains would be not just improving the local air pollution environment, but also of the whole airshed in terms of the as the transboundary basically moves, right? So I think that is a sector where I do believe as we move forward, uh, just like we have seen investment go into renewable energy in the past, investment has gone into a transport sector, right? Today, private sector investment into electric mobility is a very natural investment, right? Because the right policy frameworks, et cetera, which which support. It will peak, but then new policies will come and then the new set of investments will happen. I think the next big sector intervention, especially the micro, small and medium enterprises, which are the backbone of the economy, right? Uh it provides employment. Especially of the employment, right? So I think that is one sector that needs a big push and big focus. Okay. So I was giving example was that let's say there's a strong emphasis on going for common boilers, right, for small-scale industries, which would also mean that industries would have to move out of their current locations into these common facilities. Very same challenge as is there in the cook stores, right, transition. This is going to happen. So we need to find a mix of both behavioral shifts in how these units operate and function, also ensuring that sometimes they feel that their products that they manufacture are kind of copyright or need to be protected, cannot be shared with others. We have seen this transition to be a bit more challenging in many industrial sectors. So I think some innovation is needed on the technology side, some innovation needed on the process side, plus creating new investment mechanisms which will drive these.

SPEAKER_06 32:23

Yeah, you're describing a little bit of a cluster model as well, which also then makes the financing a bit easier.

SPEAKER_04 32:28

I mean, this is where China has really nailed it. But I think the biggest hindrance comes in terms of transforming them into implementation, enforcement, right? I think those are the challenges that we still have to overcome.

SPEAKER_06 32:40

So something I've seen that shifts some of these paradigms is a technological innovation that suddenly, you know, sometimes you get a technological innovation that says, oh, I can now pinpoint who's doing the pollution, where before you could kind of get away. And then suddenly that creates an awakening. Other times it's some incredible technology that just makes something fundamentally so much cheaper with both AI as well, where there's a, you know, I've seen a lot of interesting arguments about AI's role in climate change and efficiency, but also other innovations that you're seeing. How much for you is also that side of the equation something that you're focused on or expecting to deliver some results, that there is some big step changes in innovation that could be transformative. And what might those be, even if it's not completely evident today?

SPEAKER_04 33:24

So one of the things that we are currently, you know, we have a program with IIT Kanput in India, which is looking at multiple things, including indigenous manufacturing of production of low-cost sensors. The same center of IIT has also now become the government of India's center of excellence on AI for cities, right? And therefore they are able to now link both their capabilities of monitoring through low-cost sensors and AI and apply that in terms of creating much more informed choices for policymakers to know exactly where the let's say local pollution hotspot monitoring, right? Right now the model has been that you install sensors or you have mobile sensors which will go and monitor, right? With the combination of AI and the data is allowing them to generate much more clear analysis, which will tell which are the clear hotspot regions, which can therefore be where action needs to essentially happen.

SPEAKER_06 34:21

Sometimes solutions come from unexpected quarters. And I wonder whether tech has a role to play. For instance, there's data that shows that people started spending less time in their cars after the introduction of Google and Apple maps. If your route is better mapped, you're likely to spend less time idling in a traffic jam and therefore causing less pollution and, in fact, taking in less pollution. With this in mind, I spoke to Amit Moria and Roli Agarwal about their work at Google Airview. Amit, tell us about how Airview makes us look at cities differently.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

So the idea for Airview Plus really comes from a fundamental principle. You can't fix what you can't measure, right? So most of the cities, uh, if you see, they are currently struggling with the major problem of not having the enough data sources to take informed decisions. And that is what the critical insight for us to find a way to provide this hyper-local air quality data. And Airview Plus is a Google initiative that aims to establish cost-effective, hyper-local, and scalable air quality monitoring to raise awareness about air quality and enable action on climate using Google AI. And one of the important parts, Gaurav, I want to double down on it that even though there are air quality monitoring infrastructure is available at a city level, but it is just like right, you know, and those gives you air quality information at a citywide level. But it is just like having a thermometer which gives you an average temperature of a city, but doesn't tell you that your neighborhood is on fire. And that's where this hyperlocal air quality information becomes much more critical.

SPEAKER_06 35:54

Data in the air pollution space is highly politicized. I've spoken to people in different parts of South Asia in very similar stories. Whenever the data starts to look bad, people look bad. And then it becomes a bit of a challenge. What is your source of hyperlocal data?

SPEAKER_00 36:06

Yeah, so and you touched upon a very important point, Gaurav. Unfortunately, we have made the data transparency as a stigma for cities. Actually, it is the more right from the transparency you bring into the air quality, the more solution you will see automatically will come from right, you know, from the ground up. For us, in order to ensure that we have a good wide coverage, we identified where are the currently the air quality data gaps are there in India, right? So government has already installed and they have done a phenomenal job of installing 800 plus sensors all across India. But there were pockets, there were cities where there was no air quality monitoring infrastructure in place. We identified those places and put in the sensors provided by the local startups to measure the air quality. So the way the uh Google AI-powered air quality models works is that we have on-ground sensors, right? You know, we take air quality data from these on-ground sensors, and then on top of it, it is further getting integrated with your satellite imagery. It gets integrated with the weather patterns, it gets integrated with the fire-related right here, the events. And by combining all these three together, we build an modeled air quality layer, which you currently see on Google Maps. So today, if you go on Google Maps and open up the air quality layer for India, you can find that beautiful air quality layer on top of it, which allows users to see the air quality in their neighborhood at a resolution of 500 meters by 500 meters.

SPEAKER_06 37:44

I asked Abit a similar question. How does he source data? Who are the major producers of pollution and what did he have to go through to get that data published?

SPEAKER_05 37:53

So we did what's called a tier one or tier two emissions inventory, which is essentially a desk study. So uh it is supplemented by our uh monitoring network, which is nationwide with 150 monitors, and by the end of this year, that should be double. But also, like, you know, we get government statistical data on the number of registered and on-run vehicles in each uh airshed that we've defined number and type of industries, which is kind of what we had to also map ourselves. Like, you know, you can get an idea of what the industries are, but like to gauge is it a textile industry, is it a steel mill, is it a cement plant? And then accordingly, you know, how big is it? So, how many emissions it would be generating? So the first step is always like, you know, just a desk study of figuring out what is the available data, uh, which is what we've done. The next step that we hope to do has to be in coordination with the government where you do on-ground surveys. And also what is very much missing in Pakistan is things like chemical speciation studies, because we we can model what is coming out of this desk study, and we can say, okay, based on certain modeling criteria applicable with this region, we know that a coal power plant is giving out so much sulfur dioxide pollution, and there's so much particulate matter pollution coming from these industries and these sectors. But what's next is that exactly what is that those particles made of, right? Like in a place like Karachi. Is it sea salt? Is it dust coming from Balochistan and Middle East and North Africa? So one can really identify and quantify those, which gives you like the baseline of you know exactly where you should target and you know what reduction expectation you should have. So that's in a nutshell what we're trying to do. We're trying to build the evidence base to have effective policy.

SPEAKER_06 39:41

So collecting good data is only as useful as people actually using it. And so I wanted to go back to Roli Agarwal and the Google AirView team to ask if all that interesting data that they're collecting, who's using it, are new companies actually forming uh on the basis of the data that Google is putting out.

SPEAKER_03 40:00

I don't think any one entity can solve for it. And we are very conscious that even though, you know, Airview Plus with the sensor technology provides a really good foundation to understand and get the numbers, on its own, it's not gonna be enough. Right. So that's really where the point that you're making on partnerships becomes really important. And what our team did really there was go out and build these partnerships, right? Which then helped the project one, like become technologically grounded, if I use that word, right? Credible, because now it is grounded almost in the local ecosystem. It has been uh worked upon by local researchers. Uh, Amit and team have collaborated with uh local city bodies, right, to look at what they are seeing, what we are seeing. So it's really been partnerships really have been core.

SPEAKER_06 40:54

Maybe if you can give an example, one example of an interesting like startup partnership, just so I think the audience can feel what is that sort of innovation that's happening, and maybe a government or a local government partnership.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

So we started working with the local startups, Orashore and Respiro Living Sciences, and they are the ones who are bringing this sensor technology to India, and they are the ones who are deploying the sensors and maintaining it over a longer period of time. Having said that, the second part was the credibility in the air quality data, because there has been an attempt being made to deploy economical air quality sensors and try to measure the air quality and take action using that information. But many of the times the accuracy was an issue. So that's where we bring in the local researchers, partners like C steps, IIT Delhi, IIT Hyderabad. As a third party, they validated all those sensors data which is coming in from the AirView Plus sensor network and confirm that, yeah, it is it is meeting the threshold. So that was the second right, you know, the partnership angle. Then the third one is the final city administrators. So we identified and we worked with the initial cities who are interested and who are ready to take right, you know, to take this journey with us. And they are the ones who use this data to take informed decisions. And I can give you a few examples, like of Chennai, Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, and Navi Mumbai. These cities were able to improve the air quality in their cities by identifying the pollution hotspots and then seeing a considerable improvement in air quality during the winter season. So that's the way, right, you know, the overall partnership model worked. And it is still right, you know, we are still building upon it.

SPEAKER_03 42:38

I would also like to share that, you know, once the air quality layer was launched on maps, right? That's like one way to bring this information to the public. But there is also work that we do from an enterprise perspective, right? So Google Maps can also be used by enterprise players, right, to show different kinds of solutions, right, that are targeted to their use case. So now imagine what happens if the air quality information could sit within different scenarios, right? One of them I think you all were talking about earlier. So think education, right? If you're an education institute, entity, website, being able to use the air quality information in that setup or health, fitness, talk about real estate, right? Now you're starting to marry different kinds of data sets, and that becomes magical. That is where the action can start happening in a more, I would say, accelerated way.

SPEAKER_06 43:36

Amit, when you are building this product, right? Ultimately your product is built within a framework of what data is available and the laws of the land. And I guess if you again, if you had a magic wand and said, wow, I wish someone had given us access to this data or I wish we weren't restricted, what is that thing that would sort of you think unlock a lot of even more value around what could be built?

SPEAKER_00 43:54

Very uh interesting question for sure, Gaurok. So still, I would say that the air quality layer. Is not available for all the countries, right? You know, on our maps, the air quality layer is only available wherever we have access to the data and where regulators are open to share that data with us. So that is the point number one that we can make this information available for everyone, provided this information is also being shared with us and with others, right? You know, because air quality is a common good, right? And the major problem that we are seeing with the air quality is the common goods issue, where it is everyone's problem, but not everyone is trying to solve for it, right? You know, and whosoever trying to solve for it is sort of in effect right now because of the various reasons. So the first thing is making or having access to this information is definitely going to help us scale this product and making this information available for everyone. The second one is having the standard approach of measuring the air quality. Every country uses their own air quality index, which varies substantially from Singapore to Pakistan to India to Bangladesh. I think we will require some sort of an standardization because that the air we breathe and the particulate matters to the gaseous matters which are there in it is definitely going to impact the health of the people, which is directly or indirectly going to impact the health and the productivity of the people.

SPEAKER_03 45:25

I've often wondered if you were to take a really long-term view, right? And if you enabled, how do I say this, like a personal report card, right? Which is something which tells me as a citizen, me as a business, right? Me as whatever entity I may be, how am I, you know, contributing to the situation at hand, right? And therefore, what is it that I can do to prevent that? So this, of course, is the macro, but also like individual action, right? That ocean is made up of every single drop that exists in it. So if I think about a wish list personally, just as a, you know, man on the woman on the street, right? I sometimes really wish that I had that crystal, you know, ball which told me how me, my family, my neighborhood, you know, is contributing to this problem. And therefore, then what is it that we need to do? So again, like how do you create that inspiration and therefore action at an individual level? I would love for something to happen there. You know, there is on that thought, there are a bunch of things that we are doing, right, from a Google Maps perspective, besides AirView Plus, which goes somewhat in that direction, Goris. I'm I'd like to mention some of them. So electric vehicles, you know, and the whole move to Eevee, right? One of the deterrents we keep hearing about is range anxiety, right? What we are doing is starting to help a little bit with that by making charging stations more discoverable. Okay. So what that means is we are again partnering with charging station operators, you know, anybody who's got like really a charger out there to put that on the map. So when you're navigating around your city, you know exactly where these charging stations are going to be, right? It's not going to solve anything today, but solutions like this add up.

SPEAKER_06 47:10

That's a great wish list and a fantastic discussion. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

Garov, what's your takeaway from the conversation?

SPEAKER_06 47:17

You know, I think my one takeaway is this needs to become a serious political issue. It cannot stay a technocratic issue. People need to now start losing jobs if they don't fix it. And I think that requires all of us to create a bit of a groundswell. That's a political groundswell. But in actually, this is a visceral thing. You were experiencing this in Bombay, and I'm curious what's your one takeaway from listening to our guests?

SPEAKER_01 47:39

So I wear a very strong execution hat, and I feel whether it's a citizen with a censor, a policy maker, a tech innovator, everyone has a role to play. And the real power lies in connection, connecting ideas, data, action to solve this problem.

SPEAKER_06 47:55

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 47:56

In our next episode, we dive into another contemporary issue AI, its harms and benefits. We'll be speaking to lawyer and digital rights advocate Apar Gupta, Anshul Tevari, the founder of the online platform Youth Kia Vaz, Urvi Shia Naja, the founder of the Think Tank, the Digital Futures Lab, Reed Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, and Eric Wang, the founder of RhinoShade.