| Abstract Title: | Regulatory regime for Real Time Pollution Monitoring in India: an assessment |
| Session Choice: | Indian Regulations |
| Presenter Name: | Mr Sanjeev K Kanchan |
| Company/Organisation: | Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, India |
| Country: | India |
Abstract Information :
The developed countries like US, UK, Germany and other European Union (EU) members have established a strong regulatory framework for the real time pollution monitoring and reporting system. Their experiences establish that the system has huge potential to improve the environmental regime of a country that India has yet to familiarize with. Similar to other developing economies such as China, Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam etc., India has serious problem of weak pollution standards, missing standardised monitoring system and protocol and poor data transparency where adoption of continuous emission monitoring system (CEMS) and continuous effluent quality monitoring system (CEQMS) can help.
As far as continuous pollution monitoring is concerned, Indian industries had started to install it as per the charter of corporate responsibility for environment protection in 2003, however regulatory bodies failed to materialize this opportunity. In 2011, a pilot level scheme for particulate matter emission trading was also started which is still struggling to show any significant result. Lately, the adoption of CEMS and CEQMS took place in 2014, but unfortunately all without taking any learning from the past experiences. This led the implementation of real time monitoring system to go through distress.
Absence of proper regulatory infrastructure that should be ensured well before mandating real time monitoring system, affecting the initiative most in India. The infrastructure required mainly includes guidelines, protocols, quality control and assurance system, integrated and tamper proof data transfer system and compliance check system. The proper implementation of real time monitoring should have been developed with strategic planning development of needed infrastructure beforehand. The initiative which has been put on standby mode since past three years needs immediate course correction and push.
The presentation will discuss the regulatory system and experiences for real time monitoring in India, current status, mistakes and the corrective actions needed. It will also establish the relevance of scheduled deliberations in CEMS India conference.
