SANEI: Completed Studies: Abstract

Valuation and Accounting of Urban Air Pollution: A study of Some Major Urban Airsheds in the Indian Subcontinent

This study deals with the estimation of user benefits from controlling pollution in some major urban areas in the Indian Subcontinent. The urban areas being considered for this study are Delhi and Kolkata in India and Kathmandu in Nepal. The estimates of benefits will be made using observed behavioral methods of valuation: hedonic house property values and household health production models.

In the developing countries context, especially in the case of India and Nepal, the major part of required data has to be collected through household surveys. It is proposed to survey a sample of three thousand households from three cities. Using the benefit estimates made in this study, satellite accounts of air pollution consisting of physical and monetary accounts will be developed for each city.

The physical accounts for air pollution could be prepared using the data form the secondary sources. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Government of India publishes monthly ambient air quality data at a number of monitoring stations in each major city in India. This data are available for the last ten years for three important air pollutants:SO2, NO2, and SPM. Using this time series data on stocks of pollution loads could be constructed for the cities of Delhi and Kolkata.

Also, the CPCB provides the ambient air quality standards for many other cities too. Using this information, the safe levels of stocks of pollution loads in each city could be estimated. Using these estimates, the additions to the stocks of pollutants in each year over and above the safe levels could be estimated. Given the estimates of marginal valuation of pollution loads by the households made using observed behavioral methods of valuation reviewed in this proposal, the estimates of damages households receive if pollution loads exceed safe levels in each city could be made.

If the estimates of damages from air pollution could be made similarly for all the cities in India, the environmentally corrected net national product (ENNP), corrected for urban air pollution, could be obtained if the sum total of damages for all urban areas in India is deducted from the conventional estimate of NNP. However, in this study we attempt to estimate ENNP for India corrected for air pollution in Delhi and or Kolkata. A similar exercise will be done for Kathmandu , the capital of Nepal, also.



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