Maharashtra’s Chief Secretary Sujata Saunik urged 43 civic bodies of the State on Thursday (August 8, 2024) to create intervention schemes for effective air-quality management practices.
Ms. Saunik was speaking at a workshop focussing on climate action planning, finance, and clean air action under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) cities programme. These 43 cities included tier-I, II, and III urban areas.
“Maharashtra has been at the forefront of creating and implementing climate action and heat action plans. We need to look at air-quality in a similar way, where we need to track sources of air pollution, map them, look at various interventions to tackle them effectively by creating evidence-based clean air action plans. This is the time to come together and learn from global best practices to implement positive action urgently,” Ms. Saunik said during the day-long ‘Climate Forward Maharashtra’ organised by the State’s Department of Environment and Climate Change with World Resources Institute (WRI India).
At the event, State’s Environment Secretary Pravin Darade mentioned, “We have issued directives mandating the setting up of city and district climate action cells to prepare city, and district level plans that align with India’s net-zero goals by 2070.”
During the workshop, the participants took part in exercises related to data-based decision-making in executing climate action plans and understanding how to identify sources of air pollution within the city limits and common challenges in addressing measures to improve air quality.
