Call for efforts to check increasing air pollution
Participants of a workshop have stressed the need for collective efforts to check the regional problem of increasing air pollution in South Asia and Hindu Kush Himalayan nations.
At the workshop on ‘air pollution, climate and health in South Asia and HKH’ under way in Laliptur since November 27, participants expressed concern about increasing air pollution. They said air pollution extends beyond cities, across vast rural areas and across international boundaries and its impacts on the region’s climate, on the health of hundreds of millions of people, as well as on agriculture, water resources and income generation of the people. The four-day workshop is co-hosted by the Ministry of Population and Environment and International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.
The participants of the programme are of the view that effective implementation of the Male Declaration on the Control and Prevention of Air Pollution and its Trans-boundary Effects in South Asia-1998 could be the best means to minimise the impact of air pollution. MoPE Secretary Prakash Mathema and ICIMOD Director General David James Molden said air pollution had emerged as the regional problem and timely combined efforts were essential to control its effects.
