Great just great. Britain. Is delayed but the hounds follow would drama the brics it on aljazeera. Its being called apocalyptic india is suffering unprecedented levels of their pollution with warnings of dire consequences for Peoples Health but what exactly is causing pollution there and across the region and whats being done to tackle this is inside story. But i want to welcome to the program im Darren Jordan indias top coach says new delhis choking every year and blames the State Government for failing to cut pollution the problem is so bad schools have been shut flights diverted and a Public Health emergency declared some experts say breathing the city is a is as bad as smoking 50 cigarettes a day and thats not just in the capital the World Health Organization says 13 other indian cities are mung the worlds 15 most polluted unshod who are reports now from new delhi. This. New delhi. 400 on the citys index is considered very severe. And. People it is bad every winter but this is the 1st time the government has declared a Public Health emergency. 3 says he doesnt like. That its necessary. The reason im wearing a mask has increased pollution. In the last 4 or 5 days my nose is water and my eyes are burning. Children. Says she suffers a condition the pollution has to go to hospital. I have a cold a cough my chest hurts since Pollution Increased everything hurts now doctors say because of the toxic small they have treated. Patients over the past few days some People Living in Indias National capital say its become a gas chamber the state. Between those registrations. And even. Behind me is the iconic. President its a Tall Building but today. The government has taken the step of the number of goals on the street that should reduce. But as long as. Its. Expected to continue to be very severe. The spammers in the adjoining states of punjab and haryana have harvested their rice and now need to clear their land for their winter wheat crop burning is the quickest way environmentalists say that needs to change but i think at the end of the day farmers need to sort of put pressure on the government to ultimately provide bit rate markets that are needed to shift away to other crops but pharmacy if they are to change their practices and invest in Clean Technology and machinery they need support from the government thats on top of it tackling other sources of pollution meaning those hoping for cleaner air are unlikely to have immediate relief. Aljazeera new delhi. Well joining me now are guests in new delhi kartik in essen a Research Fellow at the council on energy and environment and water on skype from helsinki laurie lead analyst on asia at the center for research on energy and clean air and in bangkok Faisal Parrish director of the Global Environment center hes a specialist on fire and haze prevention thats a problem that malaysia faces every year a warm welcome to your wall going to sin in new delhi let me start with you if i may because thats the ground 0 of this problem i mean the air quality in new delhi is now being described as apocalyptic i mean why has the situation become so dangerous and how big is the scale of the problem briefly. So the good part is weve actually gone past apocalypse and its actually improved in some sense today and thanks largely to the fact that the meteorology is sort of played in favorably and if you look at the situation thats currently there its there for probably 2 reasons one is that i think the meteorology over the last 2 or 3 days has been really unfavorable that is like a big part of it but more importantly i think we anticipated that you know the emissions that actually are actually do or do proper inning right now would not reach the proportions that they have and the fact that you know it would not combine so neatly with the meteorology and unfortunately that activity in the streets of delhi or goes on as it would other ways and people dont really have a sense of the fact that you know it is really lethal to be the heir and thats the tribes most tragic but really so a lack of preparedness even though sort of all new when was declared even a month ago with regard to sort of emissions from other sources open with burning or even if its sort of ensuring that all the vehicles that are playing on the road have the emissions certificates in place or regulating industrial emissions rate all of that i think was not a state as it should have been and then suddenly when it struck you were left with really no options lets bring in peter there in helsinki i mean laurie governments and their policies cant really depend on meteorology come there and youre an expert on air pollution across asia why is india got it so wrong and whats behind this latest air pollution crisis do you think. Absolutely recon depend on the weather all what we can depend on is that every winter india gets these weather where you have the slow moving air moss moving across the north india line collecting pollution from Industries Power plants was holes burning and there will be hazardous small guy unless you had read those emissions if you look at the challenges that the Indian Government has had in implementing its policies one of the most depressing examples is the regulation open missions from bar plants that were supposed to already comply with new emission standards before this winter but the government and apart from south been dragging their feet and also diluting some of the standards the reason that i bring this up is that with our clients youre dealing with a few dozen sources whereas with farmers or households youre dealing with millions so this it should be one of the easiest places to start but there are all of course tradeoffs and there is opposition from those people who have to foot the bill for these measures paris there in bangkok filemon how critical is the issue of vehicle emissions here because india may not have the strict vehicle emissions standards we see in north america and europe said you think car rationing will solve the problem i mean were talking about new delhi having Something Like 10000000 cars i mean thats really hard to police and it its difficult and thats why i think the government is looking up this alternate days changing trying to reduce the numbers but it is a challenge and its difficult to police that in such a dense city is new delhi. Kartik going to stand back there in new delhi i mean how much do you think indias rapid Economic Growth under Prime MinisterNarendra Modi may have been a contributing factor to this pollution crisis and is the Environmental Impact an inevitable consequence of Economic Growth in trying to pull millions of people out of poverty. I think thats a good question of course it is undeniable that delhi sits in a place which is susceptible. To air pollution in the windows every year but as you rightly said in the last decade or so this issues of course become very prominent adelie was one of the 1st cities in the country to espouse a compressed natural gas engine for its entire fleet of public vehicles and a large share of our taxes in order to close the light here and that was to address the pollution that you know it was seen from they can look back in the ninetys and in them in the late ninetys and the change in the regulation happened so and it is implemented at a scale that is sort of unprecedented even by european standards so in that sense delhi has recognized the problem and sort of addressed it at that point but what happened is that the Subsequent Group that is witnessed primarily be the vehicles and the rampant sort of you know i guess the destruction of the natural habitat so there are really mountains that sort of surround any have been degraded over time i mean so that has allowed for more dust to sort of really come in from the desert that delhi sits right next to and that is really added to the problem i dont think its a problem i dont think its correct to attribute this to the last 5 years of the of the of the government thats currently in place its something thats accumulated over time. But the fact that you know different administrations sit at the center of the state and at the you know at the city level does not really help either because then theyre sort of its a bit of political jugglery where each party is blaming the other for inaction and every time something goes well and each day to take credit when in reality i think the meteorology is probably the one thing thats worked in favor of of killing the at all lets lets bring in i think its really a combination of the fact that you know theres not been a clear political muster lets bring it back laurie melitta if we can i mean laurie you extensively researched chinas coal consumption and Carbon Dioxide trends are there any similarities between the causes and effects of air pollution in india and china and why the situations become so dangerous in new delhi. India seen rapidly rising coal consumption and old Oil Consumption in the last decade very similar to what china experienced up to earlier this decade and that is definitely a part of why the problem has been so hard to seoul there has been progress on the on some sectors but a lot of that gets upset by the rapid increase in oil costs coal consumption and Oil Consumption what china has managed to do in the last 5 years hes to bring down the levels of pollution significantly and that happened by putting a stop to the increasing coal consumption and then actually even dramatic improvements in that pollution control technologies that are used in coal fired power plants and factories and so on but it will be very hard to do this ok the technology you have about 10 percent a year of 5 percent per year increase in india underlying use of dirty energy will perish in bangkok i mean were being told that one major factor causing the pollution in new delhi is farmers in neighboring states like put in job in haryana burning crops stubble to clear their fields i understand youre an expert in this sort of thing how big an issue is crop burning and how do you then deal with farmers whose crops up pretty much their livelihood. So we have a lot of experience in Southeast Asia with this in fact the burning of agriculture land for preparation of Agricultural Land is one of the main sources of the large scale trans boundary haze we have in Southeast Asia that affects more than 6 or 7 countries and sometimes the smoke cloud cover several 1000000 square kilometers so it is a Major Economic environment and Health Impact in this region and the government has been trying to address it on a range of fronts and making some success theyve identified which are the most critical areas of burning or what type of land create the largest amount of smoke contribution and that is burning and degradation of people and system their Weapon System which has a very high amount of organic material and when the fires there create. Massive smoke clouds and so basically the government has moved to ban the further development in these areas working with the farmers small holders Large Scale Companies private sector to introduce best management practice 0 burning practice has been practiced for the last 1520 years by large scale plantations and governments are really working to bring that down through initiatives and incentives to small holders by giving incentives or financial and other incentives for 5 days free villages that they call let me just take the take the debate back to laurie millet in helsinki because kartik in new delhi was talking about the Government Initiative of car rationing and driving cars with odd and even played some different days i mean other countries like mexico have used similar car rusting schemes and we know that china brought in a scheme for the olympics back in 2008 to reduce pollution in beijing and apparently they had the best air quality in a decade what lessons do you think india can learn then from china success and improving equity in that sense the measures taken into capital such as new delhi and beijing are things that. Thats the most attention but what china has really done well is addressing pollution from the entire region surrounding beijing. Up to hundreds of kilometers away beijing is surrounded by hundreds of plants its the region in the world that produces the most steel so that dressing that industrial sector has been by far the biggest challenge and of course addressing coal fired power plants new delhi is in are very intelligent position because its a city surrounded by areas with with dense of millions of people with factories with kwame households all of those emissions and its very limited the city is very limited in what what it can do within its own boundaries. And in no way talking about new delhi small go on delhis mold is a misnomer because were talking about a small that extends hundreds of kilometers all the way from one job to west bengal and what we really need to see in india is action on that regional level not just putting delhi alone on the spot because its impossible for the city to solve this alone most of the coalition there is coming from outside the city all right gentlemen stay with us if you will because i want to broaden this out across the region 99 of the worlds 100 most polluted cities or an asia thats according to a report last year by visual and greenpeace it also found that half of the worlds 50 most polluted cities are in india 22. 00 in china and the rest in pakistan and bangladesh in indonesia the problem is even worse the capital jakarta is now ranked as the most polluted city in Southeast Asia followed by vietnams capital hanoi when air pollution reached alarming levels in Southeast Asia where toxic haze blanketed large parts of malaysia and singapore farmers in indonesia were blamed again for burning stubble to make way for new crops and the World Health Organization estimates around 7000000. 00 people die each year from brain. Being polluted it more the 90 percent in low and middle Income Countries mainly in asia and in africa lets just bring back our guests here kartika nessun in new delhi so i mean these figures. I watering up they you know the World Health Organization estimates 7000000 people die a year from breathing toxic air 90 percent of those deaths in poverty stricken areas of asia africa why is asia as a region blighted so much by this quickly. I think the even though the facts may suggest that 7000000 people a day across the world and in fact 1100000 of those in india if you walk down the streets of delhi or you know which is the most impacted you will not find too many people actually aware of this you will find that most people walk around without a mask so were not yet there where beijing got to when it came to you know Peoples Awareness and everybody Wearing Masks and Walking Around and sort of you know putting the government under siege when it comes to acting on this in improving the quality of laves so that realisation has not dawned on them and i think that is the most fundamental part of being able to address this issue because that has to be a public demand and an outcry saying that i want better quality and thats just not happened because there are a host of issues that governments need to resolve and we focus on infrastructure creation and jobs and Economic Growth but on the way and weve just basically let this by the wayside and i think thats really where the fundamental problem is and unlike the case of china and Southeast Asia where you know weve got these large sources that you know do the sort of relieving to ductile in the case of delhi and much of india its a combination of sources that really result in what we have done he does not see the kind of germs that you know are jakarta would see but transport emissions arent doing that sort of that big its its a 4th of may be living under the 4th so i think thats also the big challenge that you know its really a multitude of sources which means that the responsibility of actually tackling air pollution is not just with one agency but its a multiple one spread across and in a democratic system when you have so many people coming together to work on air pollution its not that easy to dissolve but the it has to start with the public making a clear case for why they need to why air quality needs to be improved and that needs to figure out in the way they want to well come back to you in a 2nd just to respond to what kartik was saying there but let me bring it back fires will perish because youre an expert size or on fire and hay is prevention yet every year in the nation of farmers a blame for causing this toxic haze that drips across large parts of indonesia malaysia and singapore what do. Does this happen why cant these 3 governments prevent what is effectively an annual crisis i mean it has been going on in various scales for the last 2025 years the big problem that we have is that we have a special type of ecosystem called people an ecosystem a natural ecosystem which stores up to 10000 tonnes of carbon perfecta lets just pick this up with laurie motivates a lot of them and you specialize on the impact of air pollution across asia can it be measured in health terms as well as in the cost of the economy and absolutely we know from studies that have compared. The Life Expectancy the risk of many. Poor People Living in. Cities with clean air and those with polluted air that the risk of diseases like lung cancer is troll. Heart attack and so on goes up in polluted air in fact the entire global Life Expectancy shortened by about 11 months because of air pollution and of course a disproportionate part of that takes place in the most polluted places most of its which are in asia so it is a major Public Health issue and an economy issue im fine so let me ask you here because i mean just reading through some of these pollution reports they seem to be saying theres a clear link between such as like poverty blow income population growth that dictates toxic levels of air pollution so is this all about where you are on the economic scale that decides the quality of the air that you breathe. I mean its not just the way you are i mean its also where you are physically in relation to the high fire prone areas which are in the region and in the prevalent wind direction where they are downstream of these a major fire prone areas its also driven a lot by also larger scale not just small scale burning but long. Scale burning related to fire spreading into plantation and forest land which the government is really struggling in this region the Southeast Asia to deal with and its a big issue across the indian subcontinent and this is where we need a much broader innovative approach to bring in new incentives to address and prevent large scale burning and give proper incentives for good Land Management practices and reward measures that which prevent the use of fire and encourage long term Crop Development without fire kartik going to new delhi i mean its not just about vehicle emissions is it demean the World Health Organization says 3000000000 people thats 40 percent of the worlds population still dont have access to Clean Cooking fields and technologies and thats of course the main source of household pollution. Absolutely i mean thats a thats a great point that you make and i think theres going to been a bunch of studies that have basically said that 30 percent of all particle of matter pollution that comes old rate is actually coming from our house was burning biomass and that is you need something we can escape from but this government has done a fantastic job in india as far with the predominately would you allow your where theyve basically gone ahead and given of free l. P. G. Connection for the people who cant afford it below the poverty line and for others you know at a very subsidized rate so sort of enticing them toward from the use of biomass in cooking and moving to l. P. G. Which is not quite petroleum gal which is barking and given to households and that definitely will improve the you know the experience of women and children in these households for sure and at the end of the day will also contribute to improving equality in the ambien but that is sort of like a Long Term Strategy in the sense that people need to sort of start seeing the value but at the end of the day to something that its a commodity that theyre going to be paying something for firewood in many parts of the country still free some people to spend on it but they dont quite realize that the trade off in terms of spending that money on l. P. G. Can have positive impacts for their health and at the end of the day you can also end up saving them some money because you know theyre not falling so often and the fact that you know the entire family is healthier so that transition will have to happen slowly ok final parish in bangkok a final thought from you given the scale of indias pollution can it be fixed or is it too little too late do you think definitely these things can be fixed but it needs political will it needs a broad based approach and it needs not just focusing on the vehicles in the city but in the large Scale Agricultural Development around giving real incentives to farmers for maybe changing crop diets or changing approaches supporting mechanization and other incentives to reduce this annual large scale burning which is actually not good not only for health but its bad for the Agricultural Land it decreases the productivity if you burn it better you keep the organic material and improve the productivity in situ laurie merely peter in helsinki can asian governments turn this around do you think a do they have the financial clout and b. Do you think they have the political will to radically reduce pollution. What we weve seen across the world in beijing and i would say delhi many other asian couples is that when the middle class grows when people start to worry more about their Health Declines in a body or boosting goes up and the political pressure goes up i definitely expect to see governments across asia taking more action one thing to ask in group in india is the level of data and access to data so that we can know track progress and point out where progress is happening and where not and i believe that Data Available soon is also going to speed things up all right gentlemen its a fascinating debate but time is against us we have to leave it there thanks to all our guests concert going to happen in new delhi. In helsinki and final paris in bangkok thank you all and thank you too for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting our website aljazeera dot com and for further discussion go to a Facebook Page thats facebook dot com forward slash a j inside story and you can also join the conversation on twitter handle is a. J. Inside story for me down jordan the whole team here goodbye from. Yep sold this muslim undertakers working here is a 7 days a week job thats grown with a community my father purchased a black man and started to do the funerals in london and their families we saw stopping bartering to which i became Business Partners the stories we dont often hear told by the people who the. Level of. East and undertakers this is europe an aljazeera. Investigative journalist they were surveyed. 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