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Confronting Asia’s transport and environmental dilemmas
Major Asian nations such as China and
India are caught by the need to accelerate economic growth to
rescue millions of people from poverty, and having to face vast
simultaneous environmental impacts.
Their situation is in sharp contrast to what is happening in the
United States and Australia, two of the world’s wealthiest nations
that refused to participate in the Kyoto protocols because
initiatives to tackle climate change could adversely affect their
economies.
Just like China and India, economic growth in Australia and the US
has been very strong over the past decade.
Both Asian nations, however, have to cope with hundreds of
millions of people who live lives of abject poverty and, for
similar reasons to Australia and the US, they too are not
participants in the Kyoto protocols.
Even though pollution levels are soaring and access to quality
drinking water is becoming more of a problem, Asian countries are
trying their best to tackle environmental concerns.
In India, the Supreme Court forced diesel buses in the nation’s
capital, New Delhi, to convert to compressed natural gas (CNG) to
reduce pollution from motor vehicles.
Automated rickshaws and highly polluting taxis have also been
forced to convert to gas.
Air particles that contribute to asthma and
other afflictions have actually been declining steadily since
1997, largely because of the closure of textile mills in the city.
The government also mandated a big cut in the sulphur content of
diesel.
These measures generally result in an increase in costs that
eventually gets passed on to the public.
China’s Environment State Protection Agency also recently released
a report showing that particulate matter in the air, the main
pollutant, had fallen by a marginal 4.7% in 559 Chinese cities
surveyed between 2004 and 2006.
A recent study carried out by the Asian Development Bank on
“Sustainable Urban Transport in Asia”, pointed to the importance
of prioritising public transport rather than allowing rapid growth
of private motor vehicles.
The study was done in partnership with three cities – the
Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, Pune in India, and Xi’an in China.
With the economies of these three nations growing at around double
digit levels, it was anticipated that vehicle fleets would double
every five to seven years, according to Bindu Lohani, director
general of ADB’s Regional and Sustainable Development Department.
“Poor road safety, increased congestion and air pollution not only
negatively affect the quality of life but also carry large
economic and social costs,” he said in a foreword to the study.
The study developed a set of indicators for each of the three
cities on access, safety, environment, economic and social
sustainability and governance and noted that passenger transport
was heading in “unsustainable directions”.
Mr Lohani said the emphasis had often been on building roads or
high-cost systems such as rail-based metros at the expense of more
sustainable modes such as non-motorised transport and lower-cost
bus systems.
A World Bank study indicated that even in a city as large as
India’s Mumbai, where the greater metropolitan area has more than
18 million people, more than half of all journeys undertaken are
on foot.
Trains and buses are responsible for another 39% of daily trips.
This study suggested that if 3,391 diesel buses in Mumbai were
converted from diesel to CNG, this would reduce particulate
emissions by 662 tonnes a year, or 14% of emissions for transport
excluding taxis and three wheelers.
To cater for the increased costs, bus fares would only have to
rise by 5% to 10%, it said, adding that it appeared unfounded that
such a shift would cause people to move to use of private motor
vehicles.
A decrease of particulate emissions of this order, the study said,
would reduce the number of deaths in Mumbai each year by about
100, although this ignores the long-term impact of such emissions.
Citing the case of Singapore’s 50% tax on the price of a vehicle,
the study said a more effective strategy would involve the
imposition of large fees on private vehicle ownership.
Much of this may sound like good news about possible alternatives,
but an ADB study completed late last year said that even under the
most optimistic scenarios on the expansion of road traffic in
Asia, emissions of carbon dioxide would treble over the next 25
years.
Motor vehicles in China could grow as much as 15 times in the next
30 years to more than 190 million vehicles.
And it could grow about 13 times in India.
The resulting carbon dioxide emissions could rise by 3.4 times in
China and 5.8 times in India during this period, according to the
study, “Energy Efficiency and Climate Change: Considerations for
On-Road Transport in Asia.
 
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