Dynamics of environmental problems in Mumbai

Clean Techn Environ Policy (2006) DOI 10.1007/s10098-005-0030-7 ORIGINAL PAPER Sudhakar Yedla Dynamics of environmental problems in Mumbai Received: 6 September 2004 / Accepted: 7 March 2005 Ó Springer-Verlag 2006 Abstract This paper presents the dynamics of environmental problems in Mumbai city. An evolution concept is applied to study the present environmental status of Mumbai. In order to study its dynamics, the entire process of environmental evolution is divided into four types viz. poverty-related environmental issues, industrialization- and urbanization-related environmental issues, rapid economic growth-related environmental issues and wealthy lifestyle-related environmental issues. Dynamics of suitable indicators for all the above issues over the economic development has been studied. Temporal representation of respective indicator for each type of the environmental problem presented the distribution of these types of environmental problems on a longitudinal scale. In the analysis it is found that, at present Mumbai has prevalence to rapid economic development-related environmental problems. Povertyrelated environmental issues show very little significance. Industrialization- and urban-related environmental issues coexist with rapid economic development-related environmental issues. This provides the necessary inputs to city planner so as to avoid various environmental costs that other cities have already experienced. Introduction S. Yedla Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Vaidya Marg, Goregaon(E), 400 065 Mumbai, India E-mail: s_yedla@yahoo.com Present address: S. Yedla Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, 240 0115 Hayama, Kanagawa, Japan 1 Bombay has been renamed as Mumbai during late 1990s Bombay 1, since independence, has been the center for development and financial activities of India. Manufacturing sector has been the major force in Bombay creating potential for employment, and that had resulted in migration of rural population. This influx has created an increased demand for sharing the limited public resources and infrastructure available in the island city. As the place became scarce the real estate value shot up driving the public to the suburbs. As a result, expansion of Greater Bombay in 1971 was almost entirely due to its suburbs growth. In 1981 the city s population of 3.3 million was far outpaced by the suburb population of 5 million (MPPI 1998). With these trends continuing, Bombay city, in the post-independence period has been facing severe resource constraints. This growth has further exacerbated the city s problems by overstraining its services in catering to the hordes of commuters, all heading each morning for south Bombay where the port, business offices and administrative offices are located. High population growth, inward migration and urbanization put stress on resources. Increasing economic activity and per capita income further stresses the resources and common goods (BMRDA 1996). This phenomenon creates a wider scope for increased environmental concerns, which are multifaceted and also cross-sectoral. For various social and administrative reasons, Bombay was renamed as Mumbai during late 1990s. At present Mumbai is the largest metropolitan city in India with very distinct characteristics as presented in Table 1. Environmental management concerns In the history of Bombay, there is not much note of environmental concerns. Being an island, Bombay has high assimilation potential, which made this city less environmentally concerned (Kosambi 1986). However, in light with the above-described features, post-independence era of Mumbai witnessed numerous developments, both economically and environmentally. Due to abundant employment opportunities, migration had been so predominant and till 1971 migrants constituted

Table 1 Socio-economic indicators of Mumbai Indicator Pattern Population 11.9 million as per 2001 census 1.2% of total Indian population and 12% of Maharashtra State population Literacy rate 82.4% (national average is 65.38%) Employment 3.43 lakhs (0.343 million) main workers and two-third in service sectors Per capita income Education Transport Air traffic Jobs in manufacturing sectors are on a declining trend Almost double to the average state per capita income which in turn is higher than the Indian average Services sector on the whole accounts for 64% of the income generated in Mumbai 42 students per teacher at primary school level 35 students per teacher in secondary/higher secondary school level 2,145 local train services per day 2,275 million passengers per day by local trains 4.3 million passengers per day by BEST (State road transport system), which is the highest among all metropolitan cities in India 25% of domestic and 38% of international passenger traffic in India 26% of domestic and 40% international cargo in India Source: Census of India (2001), ESM (2002), http://www.indiastat.com, http://www.bombayfirst.org the major population growth in Mumbai. This has created a wider set of environmental problems viz. lack of sanitation facilities, lack of drinking water, increased incidence of cholera. Rapid industrialization took place with most of the industrial clusters located in the vicinity of Chembur, which turned it into a gas chamber with exceedingly high concentrations of air pollution (Parikh et al. 1995). Increased economic activity resulted in steep rise in transport demands and the vehicular stock. Increased stock of automobiles, most of them being used for decades together, created numerous environmental problems. Ambient air concentrations of Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM), Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) and other hydrocarbons have crossed the allowable limits creating health problems to the Mumbai public (World Bank 1997). Increased incidence of tuberculosis was observed, and it is an indicator of the impacts of pollution on Mumbai population (Parikh et al. 1995). Urban transport sector is known for contributing greenhouse gas (GHG) to the atmosphere. With further economic development and the influence of western throw away cultures, new environmental problems have started cropping up, and increased per capita generation of municipal solid waste (MSW) is an example of such development. Lack of appropriate recycling system and infrastructure adds to the problem. Increased per capita energy consumption, particularly in an unsustainable way, creates much more stress on the environment. With the economic development of the city the set of environmental problems keeps changing. It is clear from the above description that the concerns of environmental management follow a trend: poverty-related issue rapid industrialization issues rapid economic growth-related issues wealthy lifestyle-related issues. As these issues are cross-sector in nature, conventional environmental management dealing with a particular type of problem fails to address the indirect impacts resulting from environmental issues. Therefore, it is essential to adopt a macro approach with an evolutionary perspective. Environmental evolution: concept and development In cities like Mumbai, the urbanization process is coupled with industrialization and followed by rapid economic growth. As explained by Bai (2001), in this process, words like change or growth can describe the situation far more adequately than equilibrium which makes the dynamic viewpoint an inevitable feature in dealing with the urban environment and its management. The municipalities, which in most countries are the responsible bodies for environmental management, lack long-term understanding and planning of environment. They deal with the environment as it comes to them. With such an approach, decisions often tend to be shortsighted and lack broadness in scope. As many of the cities are undergoing rapid change now, the environmentally benign future of these cities can still be shaped, at least partly. If these cities can learn from the successful experiences as well as failures of other cities, they might avoid paying some of the unnecessary environmental costs their fellow cities have paid (e.g. heavy industrial pollution due to the use of primitive technologies). For this purpose, it is essential to have a systematic understanding of how urban environments change and what drives the change. So far, the dynamic feature of the urban environment is treated as a risk rather than an opportunity. It is often shadowed by the overwhelming complexity of the issue. Viewing this as an opportunity needs an improved conceptual and theoretical understanding about what

kind of changes are taking place in urban environment, and how the process is driven. In various studies, Bai and co-workers (Bai and Imura 2000; Bai 2001, 2002) have explained the evolutionary viewpoint of the urban environmental change with empirical evidences from East Asian cities like Tokyo, Seoul, where the most rapid social, economic and environmental changes have taken place over the last several decades. The importance of introducing the temporal dimension and an ecological viewpoint in urban environmental studies was pointed out by Douglas (1988) in his study of Manchester City, England, in which he linked urban growth, physical change and human impact succession. In addition to the temporal dimension, Bai and Imura (2000) further emphasized the importance of viewing urban environmental change as an evolutionary process. Often environmental problems are cross-sectoral and complex. Categorization of these issues into several types helps to reduce the complexity of the issue. This categorization could be done based on various parameters like type of impacts, driving forces, etc. Taking into consideration these different driving forces and the spatial scale of the impacts of these problems, Bai and Imura (2000) categorized urban environmental problems into three types: poverty-related issues, rapid-growth and production-related issues and consumption or wealthy lifestyle-related issues. Types of urban environmental issues It is a convention to segregate the environmental-related problems into different segments for easy and efficient management of environment. Environmental problems are segmented into water pollution, air pollution, noise pollution, solid waste problem, etc. Due to its easiness in handling and executing counter measure, most of the municipalities adopt this segmented pattern of environmental management. However, many environmental problems are not only cross-sectoral but also have external impacts which are not captured in the conventional approach of urban environmental management. This classification ceases the opportunity of synergic action between sectors involved in handling the environmental problems. For instance, focus on response strategies for air pollution control in Mumbai could overlook its contribution to the GHG emission problem. However, by focusing on transportation and related energy issue one can capture both the problems of air pollution and GHG emissions. Better way to go about this cross-sectoral environmental problem is to identify the driving force or categorize them based on the type of impacts instead of sectors like air, water and solid waste. This approach provides an opportunity to capture the externalities (like health- and energy-related implications) of the environmental problems as well. This could encompass most of the direct and indirect indicators of environmental concern. Based on the available literature and criteria used by other researchers (Bai and Imura 2000; Satterthwaite 1997; World Resources Institute 1997), environmental problems in Mumbai are categorized into four groups viz. poverty-related issues, rapid industrialization- and urbanization-related issues, rapid economic growth-related issues and wealthy lifestyle-related issues. This helps in better understanding of the dynamic process of change in a developing city like Mumbai. Table 2 presents typical issues under each category and the major impacts associated and scale of impact. Behavioral patterns of typical issue Poverty-related issues of environmental management are prevalent when the economy is low. Lack of safe drinking water and sanitation resulting in health problems is a classical example of poverty-related environmental issues. Malnutrition results in increasing infant mortality rates (IMR). As the economy rises, income levels grow and it results in controlling these issues. This falling trend of poverty-related issues continue until the level reaches a significant low. This could be due to the fact that the growing income provides additional resources and capacity to improve public services. Macro-economic approach explains the environmental management and its behavior. When the economy is not strong, production-related activity receives the top priority leaving a wider scope for environment deterioration and resource depletion. After achieving a certain level of economic improvement the environment gets better due to the increasing affordability to take up pollution control measures and increased awareness and preference for cleaner environment among people. This pattern is often referred to as Environmental Kuznet Curve (EKC) (Hilton and Hank 1998; World Bank 1992). Though it is not universally proved for all pollutants, EKC concept explains the behavior of most of the pollutants vis-a` -vis economic development. The pattern of this inverted U curve varies depending on the environmental regulations, structural changes in the economy, technological improvement, energy efficiency and trade. Category of consumption-related issues, rapid economic growth-related issues and wealthy lifestyle-related issues, does not improve with economy. They keep rising with the economy with a possible time lag between them. This trend is observed in cases like per capita MSW generation, per capita carbon dioxide emissions, per capita energy consumption and other indicators (World bank 1992; UNDP 2002). Reasons for this pattern could be most of these problems are not of much significance for local governing bodies. As they are global in nature they could be easily externalized. Unlike the local pollution problems these issues fail to catch the public notice, as they are not directly harmful. Thus, there exists very little incentive for the municipal authorities to

Table 2 Categorization of environmental issues in Mumbai Type Typical issues Causes Major impact Spatial extent of impacts Type I :Poverty-related issues Type II :Industrializationand urbanization-related issues Type III :Rapid economic growth-related issues Type IV :Wealthy lifestyle-related issues Low access to safe drinking water; contamination of water bodies Air pollution, water contamination; industrial solid waste; poor urban sanitation Inadequate infrastructure; rapid population growth; income disparity Rapid industrialization; low rates of emission treatment, lack of efficient management CO 2 emissions; NOx Increased mobility; emissions; noise pollution; more emphatic municipal solid waste economic activity; less priority on environment Overburdening of energy and natural resource; dioxins High consumption; rich lifestyle; low incentives for improvement Increased incidence of infant mortality; sanitation-related health impacts such as diarrhea, cholera Industrial pollution disasters like the one in Bhopal, India; disturbance to the ecosystem; health problems like tuberculosis due to air pollution Global warming; acid rains; heaps of garbage; blockage of sewers Local Local, regional Local, regional Chemical ingredient and Regional, global dioxin-caused abnormalities; overextraction of resources handle these issues of global importance while they have much more pressing issues to handle in local domain. The future trends of these issues are uncertain. The curves beyond a certain level of income could stabilize or even decline. But this trend could not be observed even from today s richest states (Bai and Imura 2000). In spite of various government initiatives to change the consumption patterns, there is no evidence of any downward turn in these curves (OECD 1998). For a poor economy like India, it is possible that the first two types of issues are prominent. However, in the case of Mumbai, it is possible to notice both types III and IV, as the per capita income levels are much higher compared to the national average. Selection of indicators and analysis of trends For the analysis of the above-listed issues, their behavior with time and space, set of indicators are identified for each stage. These indicators are used to compare the characteristics of the current urban environmental situation. Indicators representing poverty-related environmental issues include population dynamics with detailed indicators such as total population and population growth rates; income levels with detailed indicators such as per capita income; nutrition, health and welfare issues with indicators such as IMR, death from infectious diseases, illiteracy ratio, per capita medical expenses; infrastructure and environmental pollution, with indicators such as access to drinking water and sanitation and incidence of diseases like cholera/diarrhea. IMR was chosen as a representative indicator for this category of environmental problems. IMR is the result of malnutrition and is a good measure of the poverty in any city. There is multi-fold decrease in IMR, which is an indication of improved health in Mumbai (Rao 1990). It is observed that poverty-related issues are on a declining trend in Mumbai. This is more substantiated by the fact that the Mumbai water supply and sanitation status is improving over the last few decades (GoM 2002; BMRDA 1996). Indicators for the rapid industrialization and urbanization issues include the pattern of industrial growth in Mumbai number of units and employment generation history; GDP contribution of industrial sector; urbanization and employment patterns with indicators such as employment patterns, unemployment levels, urbanization ratio, migration levels; resource use and pollution with indicators such as electricity consumption by industries, SPM levels, SOx and NOx patterns, water contamination. NOx was chosen as a representative indicator for this category of environmental problems. Rapid economic growth phase had started with economic reforms in 1993 and the pattern of many indicators had changed thereafter. This phenomenon is clearly observed in terms of foreign exchange earned (CMIE 2001; http://www.indiastat.com). Other indicators for this stage of environmental problems are increase in vehicular stock, rise in energy demand, air pollution, GHG emissions and electricity consumption. Electricity consumption was chosen as a representative indicator for this category of environmental problems. Electricity consumption in Mumbai has increased substantially. Industry and commercial sectors have equal share in the electricity consumption. A steep rise from late 1980s is observed (http://www.indiastat.com). This rise in consumption could be attributed to economic growth and increased per capita incomes as well as increased economic activity. Indicators for rich and wealthy lifestyle are not significant in Indian context. However, given the better economic status that Mumbai enjoys among the Indian

Fig. 1 Illustration of different types of environmental problems spanned over economic growth in Mumbai Intensity of the Problem (on normalized scale of 0-1) 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 Year IMR MSW NOx Electricity cities, there are traces of these indicators showing significance in the case of Mumbai. MSW generation, electricity consumption, changes in petrol and gas reserves are the indicators of this category of issues. Percentage of growth in solid waste has increased considerably which is an indicator of increased consumption patterns and rich lifestyle that Mumbai public enjoys. MSW management is one of those very serious problems that Mumbai is facing at the moment (Sarika 2004). MSW was chosen as a representative indicator for this category of environmental problems. Therefore, the stage IV type issues are also identified and analyzed in Mumbai. Though it is not possible to predict the future trends/behavior, it helps in assessing the environmental status of the city. Dynamics of environmental problems in Mumbai Representative indicators from each stage of environmental problems viz. poverty-related issues, industrialization- and urbanization-related issues, rapid economic growth-related issues and wealthy lifestyle-related issues are normalized with respect to the corresponding maximum value so as to facilitate cross comparison on a longitudinal scale. In spite of the fact that Mumbai presents one of the efficient public services in the country, poverty level is still high and overcrowding is causing lapses in the system. However, the significance of poverty-related environmental issue is not very high. The representative indicator under this category revealed a steep declining trend. Figure 1 presents the illustration of different types of environmental problems spanned over economic growth of the city and their behavior against time. This presents the empirical evidence for the stage model proposed and presented by Bai and Imura (2000) and Bai (2001, 2002). The entire graph can be divided into four different zones viz. poverty zone, industrialization and urbanization zone, rapid economic growth zone and wealthy lifestyle zone. Where the first zone is clearly demarcated, II, III and IV zones are closely clustered. This indicates that the three zones are coexisting in this city of high economic growth and promise. However, it is possible to identify which one is predominant and which one is in phasing out stage. Future trends of electricity consumption (stage III) and waste generation (stage IV) cannot be predicted. The projected values of MSW clearly indicate the rising trend with time. A similar trend is observed with electricity also. As it can be seen from Fig. 1, Mumbai at present stands at stage III facing more of rapid economic growth stage-related environmental issues. Poverty-related issues are not of major concern any more whereas there is a spillover from stage II, industrialization- and urbanization-related issues. Stage III issues and stage IV issues coexist in Mumbai with both of them following rising trends. Acknowledgements This work is a part of Urban Environment Project at IGES (Institute for Global Environmental Strategies), Japan. Author acknowledges with sincerity the suggestions given by Dr. Xuemei Bai of IGES, Japan and research inputs and assistance provided by Mr. Alok Kumar and Ms. Sowjanya Peddi at IGIDR, Mumbai, India. References Bai X, Imura H (2000) A comparative study of urban environment in East Asia: stage model of urban environmental evolution. Int Rev Environ Strateg 1(1):135 158 Bai X (2001) Industrial relocation in Asia: a sound environmental management strategy?. Environment 44(5):8 21 Bai X (2002) Process and mechanism of environmental change: an evolutionary view. Int J Environ Pollut 19(5):528 541 BMRDA (1996) Draft regional plan for Bombay metropolitan region 1996 2011, BMRDA, Mumbai, India Census of India (2001) Provisional population totals, Paper 1 of 2001 CMIE (2001) National income statistics 2001. CMIE, Mumbai, India Douglas I (1988) The rain on the roof: a geography of the urban environment. In: Gregory D, Walford R (eds) Horizons in human geography. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, pp 217 238 ESM (2002) Economic survey 2001 2002. Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Planning Department, Government of Maharashtra, Mumbai

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