ASIA-ENVIRONMENT: No Short-Cuts To Cleaning Polluted Air

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Anil Noel Netto

KUALA LUMPUR, May 20 1997 (IPS) - “I went to (the resort island of) Pulau Langkawi for a short holiday and I actually started missing the Kuala Lumpur smog,” remarked a jaded Malaysian journalist.

Cynical as it may sound but it also shows how poor air quality has become so much an accepted part of life in Asia’s booming cities.

Pollution from factories and vehicle emissions are major causes of urban air pollution in Asia’s rapidly expanding economies. In Manila and Bangkok, emissions from vehicles account for 80 per cent of pollutants in city streets.

The challenge now is how to tackle the worsening problem.

An official of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) is pushing for the “polluters must pay” policy.

M. Rahmatullah, director for ESCAP’s transport, communications and tourism division, said an important step is for countries to assess the environmental impact of a given infrastructure project in order to prevent rather than cure damage to the environment.

At a recent meeting in Bangkok, he said the key to a better environment was “to set the prices right relating to the actual costs”.

“There is currently no cost for fumes, congestion, pollution and noise. The days when the government provided transport as a public good are gone,” Rahmatullah said.

The environmental cost should be charged to the polluter, not to a taxpayer who did not use the road, he was quoted as saying.

“There is no single right answer or any one approach,” says Dr Lenny Bernstein, the outgoing chair of the urban air quality management working group of the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA) which met recently in Kuala Lumpur.

That said, the London-based IPIECA has developed a structured approach to urban air quality management to meet local needs. It is an approach that stresses partnership among the main stakeholders in the campaign to improve air quality: government agencies, industry, academics and the public.

Using this approach, the first step is to set air quality targets.

Governments may want to consider World Health Organisation health guidelines covering a wide range of air pollutants as long-term goals. After all, the main aim is to protect human health. Each country, however, is free to define its own air quality goals.

IPIECA says it is important to set priorities by looking at which pollutants exceed the air quality targets by the greatest level. Planners can then set intermediate targets, which are within the capacity of a country’s economy to achieve.

Researchers should then collect data to assess current air quality. This assessment will enable planners to formulate the objectives of an air quality management programme.

Air samples taken at strategic stationary sites or from survey vehicles will show the key pollutants in the air. These may include particulates, lead, other metals, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, ozone, toxic chemicals, and benzene.

Researchers should then identify the primary sources of pollution. Emissions can come from power plants, industry, domestic activities, waste disposal, crop and forest burning, motor vehicles, construction activity, and natural sources.

Apart from this, researchers will also need to have information on energy usage in all sectors of the economy and reliable data on local meteorological, topographic, and land cover conditions.

They will then need to determine the relationship between emissions and current air quality. This is best done using mathematical or computer-based modelling systems.

Such models include emissions forecasting models and meteorological transport models (to forecast wind patterns). Dispersion models look at how emissions from different sources contribute to the pollutants in the air near the ground.

The chosen model uses all the data that has been collected to predict the current air quality. Analysts will then compare this prediction with the actual air quality to confirm the accuracy of the chosen model.

Scientists say nitrogen oxide is an ideal pollutant to be modelled since it is the only one emitted from each of the emission source categories. By using nitrogen oxide, it is possible to project the other pollutants based on the emission ratios between these pollutants and nitrogen oxide for the various source categories.

Analysts can now use the model to chart trends in future air quality assuming emissions will grow at certain expected rates. Realistic socio-economic scenarios will define patterns of growth and consumption and allow estimation of future emissions.

The model should also take into account the growth in mobile and stationary source emissions and the effects of improved emission control technology and fuel quality changes.

What are some of these fuel quality changes? Power generation plants may switch from heavy fuel to natural gas. Domestic installations may turn from coal and wood to LPG and kerosene. Motor vehicles may run on natural gas instead of diesel.

Analysts should also factor into the model the impact of vehicle inspection and maintenance programmes, government fiscal policies, traffic management, and changes in the type and quality of energy sources.

The model should also consider population growth, economic growth, increases in personal wealth – and their effects on the demand for energy, services and goods and, hence, emissions.