Issues of pollution are the cause of concern in the developing economies like India where urbanisation is gaining a record pace. With a view to improve the quality of environment in different Indian cities and tackle national pollution problems involving citizens, Gujarat Environment Management Institute (GEMI), an autonomous body of the Gujarat Government is working on City Pollution Rating Index (CPRI) — a tool for rating cities on the basis of environment quality.
The objectives of GEMI, which provides services related to environment conservation, protection and management through the index, are to educate the stakeholders — Government bodies, municipal corporations and other authorities — regarding the status of environment quality in cities under their purview as well as to develop a sense of completion among cities to continuously improve their quality of environment as it would be handy to act as a benchmark for policy and decision makers. Besides, due to the ratings it would be easier to make people understand and interpret about quality of environment in their cities.
“The index will be first and one of its kinds in the country and probably in the world. The environmental parameters are selected based on their pollution potential and effect on human health. We will submit index proposal with Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to give rating to major cities of India,” said Dr Sanjiv Tyagi, director of GEMI.
The concept of a CPRI transforms weighted values of individual pollution related parameters of water, sewage, air, noise etc. into a single number or set of numbers came into existence for communication and decision making aspects. The Index developed is so flexible that it can separately be used as a water/air quality index for rivers, streams, ground water as well as ambient air.
According to him the index will be developed separately for three main seasons - summer, monsoon and winter and input to the index would be various pollutant parameters like pH, Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Faecal Coliform etc. for water and PM10, Sulphur Dioxide (SO2), Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) for air.
Due to the index, citizens would remain will-informed and aware about the pollution status and environmental quality of their cities and also able to identify areas of concern and improvement, said Tyagi, who is Chief Conservator of Forest rank official with the State forest department and also former member secretary of Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB).
Recently GEMI has received prestigious ISO 9001: 2008 & ISO 14001: 2004 for its management system meant for promoting & providing service related to environment conservation, environment protection and environment management. GEMI’s state-of-the-art testing laboratory is also accredited by NABl (National Accreditation Board for testing and Calibration laboratories) certificate in the discipline of chemical testing.